Over the years, the growing population in British Columbia has led to escalating wait times
and overcrowding in hospital Emergency Departments (EDs), due to insufficient number
of beds in specific units of the hospitals, such as the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) or the
Medical Unit (MU). To enhance the level of access to care, a successful prediction of bed
requirements is needed. This is achieved by having an adequate model of the patient flows
to and between the different compartments of the hospital. Focusing only on the stream of
emergency patients, we developed a queueing network to model the interaction between the
ICU and the MU, which is believed to be causing a major proportion of the congestion in
the ED. Through approximate analytical methods and simulation, we determined sufficient
bed counts in each of these two units so as to guarantee certain access standards.