Using Simulation to Evaluate Operational Trade-Offs Associated with the use of Care Teams in Specialty Care Settings

New approaches for designing delivery of care in specialty outpatient clinics are emerging as a result of the use of care-teams and shared resources. However, questions remain surrounding how shared resources, e.g., exam rooms or support staff, should be allocated to balance the competing performance objectives in specialty care settings. We develop a discrete-event simulation model to evaluate resource allocation policies in an outpatient specialty clinic. Different resource allocation policies, ranging from fully dedicated to partially flexible to fully flexible for multiple resource types, are evaluated based on multiple performance measures. We find that a proposed policy based on strategic capping of flexibility achieves desired access to resources from a provider's perspective while also maintaining high utilization rates.