An ICU has 20 beds. The average length of time a patient stays in the ICU once placed there is 5 days. The standard deviation of this time is 7 days. Patients arrive to the ICU at a rate of 3.7 per day. The standard deviation of interarrival time is 0.4 days. Answer the following:

a. What is the average number of people that would be boarded?

Explain what boarding means.

b. Currently, the hospital uses a standard discharge time for step down. If instead they step down the patient at the time they are ready, they found that this reduced average time in ICU by 7 hours. How much would average boarding time decrease if they used this strategy? Also, give one other strategy that would reduce average time in the ICU. Finally, give a reason why staying longer than needed in the ICU is bad.