An Exploration into the Uses of

Health care is a complex adaptive system that is difficult to analyze for the purpose of improving work performance. This paper discusses complex systems architecture and an agent based modeling framework to study health care system improvements and their impact on patient safety, economics and workloads. Here we demonstrate the application of a safety dynamics model proposed by Cook and Rasmussen, to study a health care system using a hypothetical simulation of an emergency department as a representative unit of a health care system and its dynamic behavior. By means of simulation, this paper demonstrates the nonlinear behaviors of a health service unit and its complexities; and how the safety dynamic model may be used to evaluate various aspects of health care. Further work is required to apply this concept in a ‘real life environment’ and its consequence to societal, organizational and operational levels of health care.