The COVID-19 epidemic has spread across the world within months and creates multiple challenges for healthcare providers. Patients with cardiovascular disease represent a vulnerable population when suffering from COVID-19. Most hospitals have been facing difficulties in the treatment of COVID-19 patients, and there is a need to minimise patient flow time so that staff health is less endangered, and more patients can be treated. This article shows how to use simulation techniques to prepare hospitals for a virus outbreak. The initial simulation of the current processes of the heart clinic first identified the bottlenecks. It confirmed that the current workflow is not optimal for COVID-19 patients; therefore, to reduce waiting time, three optimisation scenarios are proposed. In the best situation, the discrete-event simulation of the second scenario led to a 62.3% reduction in patient waiting time. This is one of the few studies that show how hospitals can use workflow modelling using timed coloured Petri nets to manage healthcare systems in practice. This technique would be valuable in these challenging times as the health of staff, and other patients are at risk from the nosocomial transmission.

Department of Industrial Engineering Faculty of Industrial Technology Universitas Trisakti Kyai Tapa No 1 Grogol Jakarta Barat 11440 Indonesia

Department of Industrial Engineering West Tehran Branch Islamic Azad University Tehran 1468763785 Iran

Department of Management Faculty of Business and Management Brno University of Technology VUT Brno Kolejni 2906 4 61200 Brno Czech Republic

Sustainable Process Integration Laboratory SPIL NETME Centre Faculty of Mechanical Engineering Brno University of Technology VUT Brno Technická 2896 2 61669 Brno Czech Republic

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