100 Discrete Event Simulation for Health Technology Assessment
through the logic without any hold, and any other scheduled events on the
entity event list can happen as appropriate. The length of stay is easily com-
puted (i.e., it is the difference between the time of the event ending the episode
and that of its starting event), and any costs or other values can be applied as
appropriate. In addition, any things that should happen during the hospital-
ization (e.g.,angioplasty) can be added as events on the entity event list.
A tempting alternative might be to represent the episode as a single simu-
lation event and reect the passing of time by assigning the corresponding
time interval as the event’s duration (Figure3.16, panel B). This is ...