A hospital institution needs frequent improvement to be efficient at its core business: the care of the human being. This paper describes a project conducted at PUCPR's University Hospital, which main objective is to evaluate changes to the Surgical Center aiming at being better prepared for the demand increase expected for the coming years. Four new scenarios were simulated and analyzed, which included restructuring of internal activities and the increase on the number of surgical rooms. The simulation models showed that the suggested changes will benefit the center and that the best scenario should have two new surgical rooms along with the restructuring of the internal activities flow. This will reduce the patient waiting time for surgical room and the rooms' utilization, besides providing a good service to the community until 2010/2011.
Hospital processes; surgical center; simulation
