| Summary: | The Yellow Zone of Emergency Department Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia (EDHUSM) plays an imperative role in providing emergency treatments to semi-critical patients who could possibly be critical if proper treatment is not administered within 30 min. Patients are clustered into four categories namely normal, semi-critical, asthmatic and pediatric patients. Generally, the efficiency of the Yellow Zone is evaluated based on its crowdedness and patient waiting period. Therefore, this study applied the hybrid method of encompassing Discrete Event Simulation to conduct proper planning, and Data Envelopment Analysis models such as Banker, Charnes and Cooper (BCC)-input-oriented and Super-Efficiency to assist the hospital’s management in improving patient flow and strategizing resource allocations and services in EDHUSM’s Yellow Zone. The simulation results revealed that the current average waiting time for normal and asthmatic patients exceeds 30 min. Meanwhile, the DEA model was developed to determine the most efficient series among 768 alternatives of resource allocations for doctors, nurses and beds. The improvement resulted in a significant decrease in average waiting time for normal patients from 88.71 to 16.28 min and for asthmatic patients from 40.57 to 8.58 min as equated to the actual present scenario. Increments of 2 doctors, 3 nurses and 2 beds are crucial in meeting the present demand while drastically improving the patient flow in Yellow Zone. The number of patients served increased by 13.95%. Ultimately, the strategically allocated resources will improve the quality, performance and services, and meet the Key Performance Indicators set in a more persistent and timely manner. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024.
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