A dynamic model of emergency room services supply chain

Since the importance of service sectors have increased over the last decade and lack of awareness about service supply chain in hospitals, the aim of this study is providing dynamic model for emergency room service supply chain by using system dynamics approach for analyzing behavior of supply chain based on the effect of supply chain bullwhip.
The research method is divided by three stages: review, qualitative and quantitative. First stage, extensive literature review has been done to identify effective factors on emergency room services supply chain. Next, to extract and modify the identified factors used open interview from eight experts. Then, to present the dynamic model information of 1780 people such as general information, nurses evaluation, disease diagnosis by doctor, and drug prescription collected from duration of 500 hours.
Findings: The dynamic model of emergency room services supply chain drawn based on system dynamics approach and the validity of the model tested by confirmation of structure, limit conditions and comparison with family credit models. After running the model, none of supply chain bullwhip effects (demand, arranging orders, price fluctuations and supply shortages) could not be consider for emergency room services.
According to the results, demand and arranging orders could not intensify the effect of supply chain bullwhip during service operation. Since human are sensitive about being healthy, price fluctuation could not effect on supply chain bullwhip. In addition, supply shortages have the same result because the need to emergency room services is unpredictable.