Inpatient discharge delays can be a significant frustration for hospitals. When a patient who is ready to go home remains in a bed for hours or even an extra day, the consequences ripple across the system. Critical beds remain occupied, post-operative recovery is slowed down, and new admissions are pushed back. These delays disrupt workflows, strain staff capacity, and reduce the number of patients a hospital can serve in a day.
Fixing the problem is not as simple as adjusting a single process. Discharge delays are usually caused by several overlapping issues. Teams may be operating on different schedules, communication may be inconsistent, and small inefficiencies across departments add up. That’s why hospitals are increasingly turning to structured problem solving, which is a methodical approach that uncovers root causes, prioritizes fixes, and ensures changes actually work.
Minitab Engage and Simul8 deliver the tools needed to make this approach scalable: Engage helps teams structure and manage improvement work, while Simul8 provides process simulation to test solutions before they’re implemented.
Build a Stronger Improvement Foundation with Minitab Engage
Minitab Engage provides the structure needed to address complex problems like delayed discharges. It acts as a centralized platform where teams can define challenges, bring in input from multiple departments, and manage the entire project lifecycle in one place. It creates clarity across roles and ensures that improvement work does not get lost in fragmented conversations or forgotten emails.
Once a problem is defined, Engage offers tools like CTQ trees, cause-and-effect diagrams, and prioritization matrices to analyze contributing factors. These tools are key to structured problem solving, helping teams map the discharge process, identify friction points, and evaluate where interventions will be most effective. Each project is assigned clear ownership and tracked against defined metrics, including average discharge time, percentage of discharges before noon, and length of stay.
This structure turns vague concerns into specific, measurable goals. Everyone involved in the project works from the same playbook and sees progress in real time through visual dashboards. 
Visualize Impact Before You Act with Simul8
Identifying the cause of delays is only part of the challenge. The next step is figuring out what to change and whether that change will actually improve outcomes. That’s where process simulation comes in. Simul8 gives healthcare teams a way to model the discharge process and test adjustments virtually before making any operational changes.
Using actual hospital data, teams can build a simulation that mirrors how discharges currently work. This includes real patient volumes, staff availability, equipment timing, and departmental schedules. With this model in place, proposed changes can be tested in a realistic environment.
For example, Simul8 can help determine whether moving physician rounding earlier in the day would reduce late discharges. It can test the impact of assigning a discharge coordinator or increasing transport availability during peak hours. Each scenario plays out in the simulation using actual constraints, which helps decision-makers understand the real-world impact before taking action.
This approach minimizes risk. It helps build consensus across departments, increases confidence in the plan, and prevents unanticipated consequences that could make the problem worse. Hospitals get a chance to validate what works without experimenting in live clinical settings.
Minitab’s solutions can lead to one less day in the hospital.
Engage + Simul8: A Full-Cycle Solution
Minitab Engage and Simul8 are most powerful when used together. Engage provides the structured problem solving framework to plan the project, capture stakeholder input, analyze root causes, and monitor progress. Simul8 brings in the ability to use process simulation to model proposed changes and forecast impact before implementation.
Together, they support a complete improvement cycle: define the problem, test solutions in a safe virtual environment and implement only what works. This approach gives teams the confidence to take action and the tools to adjust quickly if results fall short of expectations.
Stop guessing. Start discharging smarter. Get started with Engage + Simul8. 
FAQ: Structured Problem Solving in Healthcare
What is structured problem-solving?
Structured problem-solving is a step-by-step method for identifying issues, finding root causes, generating solutions, and implementing change. It typically includes tools like cause-and-effect diagrams, CTQ trees, and prioritization matrices.
What is an example of a structured problem?
A structured problem might be: “Why are fewer than 40% of patients discharged before noon?” This can be broken down, analyzed with data, and improved with targeted process changes.
What is the difference between structured and unstructured problem-solving?
Structured problem-solving follows a clear methodology and uses data to guide decision-making. Unstructured problem-solving is more ad hoc and less repeatable, often leading to inconsistent results.