Discrete event simulation for hospital inpatient flow modelling: A review of validation methods

Review of 15 discrete event simulation studies of inpatient flow: face validation is the most used technique.

• Hospital
• Discrete event simulation
• Inpatient flow
• Validation

Abstract

Hospital patient flow simulation is critical in understanding and improving healthcare system performance. However, validating these complex simulation models poses significant challenges due to the dynamic nature of hospital environments and the lack of standardized validation methods. While various reviews have explored discrete event simulation (DES) applications in hospital settings, comprehensive validation techniques for inpatient units remain scarce. This study analyzes 15 published hospital inpatient flow DES studies over the last decade. We investigate validation techniques and performance metrics reported. Our objective is to provide insights into common validation practices used to enhance the accuracy of these models. The results indicate that the most used validation technique is face validation. Also commonly used are comparisons of summary statistics and errors, as well as confidence intervals of the means of metrics related mainly to patient flow volume.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{lacort2025discrete,
  title = {Discrete event simulation for hospital inpatient flow modelling: A review of validation methods},
  author = {Lacort, Alberto and Maheut, Julien and Lahrichi, Nadia},
  editor = {Carrasco-Gallego, Ruth and Moreno-Serna, Jaime and Gutierrez, Miguel and Avilés-Palacios, Carmen},
  booktitle = {Organizational engineering, coping with complexity},
  pages = {663--668},
  publisher = {Springer Nature Switzerland},
  address = {Cham},
  doi = {10.1007/978-3-031-82334-3_115},
  isbn = {978-3-031-82334-3},
  year = {2025}
}

Last updated: 1 October 2026