(Jim Barnard, 1998)
A team consisting of Baylor employees and the Healthcare Environmental Design architectural firm has been working on the floor plan and design of this facility. Because the project involves multi-million dollar expenditures from both the physicians and the hospital and performs tasks vital to the welfare of cardiology patients, the two sponsors want to insure the facility can handle the expected patient flow in the new heart hospital. As a result, our team has been asked to collect data, run a simulation for the new facility, and analyze the results. To accomplish this task, we used data taken from logs, hospital databases, nurse and doctor estimates, and personal observations to construct a MedModel (software designed to simulate medical facilities) model which simulated the heart hospital environment. According to the simulation, the third floor of the heart hospital will be able to support the expected patient flow with no glitches if some minor changes are made. If the new facility is approved by Baylor and the physicians, it could begin construction as early as September 1998.