A post-anesthesia care unit, PACU, is a vital area within every hospital where patients can recover  from general anesthesia, regional anesthesia, or local anesthesia.

ProModel built a PACU model for an architectural firm to illustrate the difference between two design options.  This was accomplished by placing both designs in one model and having patients follow the exact same patient pattern as they enter the PACUs simultaneously.

The left or A side of the model is a Single Room design and the right or B side is an Open Bay design.  There are the same number of conceptual uses of PACU I beds in each design.  The A side has 27 dual designated pre-op and PACU II rooms.  The B side has 30 rooms, but designates specific rooms for pre-op and specific rooms for PACU II.  Macros were used extensively during the model build to enable rapid changes to the interactions of the patients within the designs.  Real arrival patterns from the hospital were used and entered using an arrival spreadsheet.

The simulation revealed that the A side showed significant time savings.  Were the ORs to be kept open the same length of time, more patients could be seen on the A side.  The A side also reduced the time spent waiting, after initial arrival for a pre-op bed.  For example, the average wait for pre-op bed on the A side was 3.9 minutes.  On the B side this average was 52.8 minutes.  That’s a pretty significant difference!

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