Staff Utilization Chart Not Working With Shared Asset Library?

[rajankur6494]

[ FlexSim 21.0.10 ]

Hi Team,

I am working in healthcare module to model my process having 2 patient served by 1 staff at a time. This feature is only available with "Acquire Resource" activity (Shared Assets library) not with "Acquire Staff" activity (HC Resources library ). But it is not reflecting utilization on chart in this way.

How to make it work?

ResourceUtilizationNotWorking.fsm

Thank you!

[JordanLJohnson · Accepted solution]

There are two kinds of utilization in HC. The first is based on the states found in the People Settings object: Idle, ProvidingCare, etc. These states are set by activities like the Process activity. The other kind of utilization is based on the Availability states. There are only three possible states in this set of states: Available, Acquired, and Unavailable. These states are handled as you acquire and release staff using the Staff resource and related activities.

In your model, there are no activities or shared assets that will set either of these kinds of states. The chart you're using shows that the MD is 100% Available, because this chart deals with the Availability set of states. This is expected behavior, given your setup.

You say you are attempting to have staff treat multiple patients at the same time. Can you explain a little more what you mean? Usually, in an HC setting, staff work with many patients over the course of the day, but never multiple simultaneously.

[rajankur6494]

Hi @Jordan Johnson

As you said rightly, staff work with many patients over the course of day as usual.

But I have something different in real process. I am modeling a chat window where provider can chat with 2 patients at a time. Do you have any other approach to model it with utilization chart?

Thank you!

[JordanLJohnson]

Here is a model that changes the Availability state. If the Staff member is chatting with 1 or more people, they go into the Acquired state. If they are chatting with zero people, they go back to Available.

MultiChat.fsm

The basic idea is that I push all the chat staff onto a list multiple times. Then, patients just try to acquire a staff member by pulling from a list. Then, when they are finished chatting, they release the staff member by pushing them back on the list.

I also added a TrackedVariable label to the ChatStaff, called Patient count. Patients increment that label when they acquire the staff, and decrement it when they release.

Finally, each staff member has a token that listens to the PatientCount label. If it increases to 1 or above, that token changes the state to Acquired. If it decreases to zero, the state changes to zero.

I didn't use standard People objects. It works in this situation, but it may not play nice with the other features of People module, if other objects can acquire or release the chatting staff.

[rajankur6494]

Hi @Jordan Johnson,

Thanks for your model!

I understood the idea and model. Unfortunately, I am getting some errors in model while opening at my end. I thought of replicating same but having issues while pushing values to list. I will post it as a fresh query.

Thank you!

[rajankur6494]

Hi @Jordan Johnson,

I have 2 question here.

1. I am doing things manually to set the states to acquired and available based on patient count. Is there any way to do below setting using picker or dropdown?

2. Since list contains pointer data, how can I pull staff based on staff label? Can I compare label with pointer data?

Thank you!

[JordanLJohnson]

1. There isn't a super easy way to set the Wait for Event activity. First, you have to open up the tree, so that the PaitentCount label on one of the staff is visible. You can sample that node to get the Event field to populate properly. Then, you have to change the Object field manually, so that you are listening to the label itself.

2. I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean by the list containing pointer data. But I think the answer to your question is that if you need a specific staff member, you can pull that object; just use token.Staff in the Query/Object field of the Pull from List.

[rajankur6494]

Ok @Jordan Johnson. Actually, your model is meeting my expectation but it found it little difficult to set up. So, I tried to achieve same in little bit different way based on some learning from your model. But, I am having label issues here. Can you check this model?

MultiChat_LabelIssue.fsm

Thank you!

[jason_lightfoot_adsk]

In your pull query you need to refer to puller.Staff, not token.Staff.

You still need to put ChatStaffName labels on the staff too - or refer to the name of the staff directly via an expression with value.name.

[rajankur6494]

Thank you! @Jason Lightfoot