Health care delivery systems of all kinds must operate under resource constraints. This gives rise to design issues that are best addressed by engineering methods such as simulation modeling and analysis. A simulator to help deal with veterinary practice design, planning, and operation issues has been developed. An expert system for processing patient appointments was integrated with traditional process world view modeling capabilities to produce the simulator. Simulator input variables and performance measures are described. An example application in practice operation and design, including extensive statistical analysis, is presented.
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