In the Healthcare Management Simulation: Hospital Operations, students manage a 250-bed general hospital with 1250 staff. The aim is to improve patient experience and operational performance at the hospital while managing costs. In a dynamic and changing landscape, over a 5-8 year period, learners will make decisions about:
Each year, learners make key management decisions related to investment projects, policies & procedures and people & rewards. Topics covered in the decisions include digital health, applications of artificial intelligence, innovation, quality management, clinical operations, sustainability, and more.
For each simulated year, the choices made impact a range of outcomes related to patient experience, quality and staff development. Based on the decisions that are entered, the simulation generates an annual staffing and recruitment plan aligned with projected workloads.
By analyzing past decisions and realistic performance data, learners discover patterns and relationships between variables — for example, how staff training influences patient outcomes, or how workload and morale affect turnover. These insights guide decision-making in later years.
Throughout the simulation, learners must also respond to external events and news — such as policy changes, new technologies, or workforce shortages — and adjust their strategies to keep the hospital on track.
With the Hospital Operations Simulation, students learn to:
Apply core concepts of healthcare management by making strategic, operational, and staffing decisions, and then analyzing their impact on hospital performance.
Recognize that management decisions have important consequences for patient experience, clinical outcomes, staff engagement, and financial results.
Understand the trade-offs involvd in managing hospital operations — decisions that benefit one area may create challenges in another.
Adapt hospital strategies to changing external conditions, such as regulatory shifts, workforce shortages, technological advances, and public health crises.
Recognize that simulation models are useful tools to understand the impact of healthcare management decisions. However, no model perfectly captures the full complexity of hospital systems.
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