Exploring trade-offs between staffing levels and turnaround time in a pathology laboratory using discrete event simulation.

Many health delivery services have required performance targets. Typically, these targets are presented as percentiles of patients to be seen within specified timeframes. These targets present hospital administrators with a resourcing problem complicated by conflicting objectives: How to minimize costs while maximizing throughput to achieve the performance targets? In this paper, we describe the use of a simulation model to evaluate the effect of changes to staff levels in a cytology department, investigating the trade-off between staff levels and turnaround times in light of performance targets specified by government.