Modeling Emergency Care in Hospitals: A Paradox - The Patient Should not Drive the Process

The objective in the creation of domain specific discrete event simulation environments is to facilitate model development in the chosen domain. In the creation of such environments, there has been a tendency to adopt a factory based world view. In this paper, we describe an approach to the creation of a generic modeling environment in the healthcare domain that breaks away from the conventional entity driven request for resource. Our approach has enabled us to create models of emergency care in four UK NHS hospitals that reflect more realistically the way emergency care is actually delivered. It appears, paradoxically, that in simulating emergency care, it is best if the patient does not come first