Issue 2 : Reduction of Patients' transportation time
Problem definition
In the ER, patients spend a lot of time waiting to be conveyed from one place to the other. It could be between the ER to a specialty department, from the ER to an inpatient bed, or even within the ER,... And this time is too long : it may take several hours in some cases.
Related work
That problem is due to several issues we've talked about :
- the number of transportations for one patient is too important.
- these transportations entail changes in the nursing teams who care about the patients and that slows down the process.
- the specialty departments,especially concerning diagnosis like imaging are too far from the ER.
- the rooms are specialized for some kinds of treatment and so patient need to be tranferred from one room to another within the ER. Rooms are not enough universal.
Ways to measure outcome
We have thought about the following possible measurements to assess the efficiency of the improvement :
- the length of waiting for the patient
- the length of stay for the patient
- the number of transportations from one place to another during the stay in the ER
References and research
Hospital Capacity, Patient Flow, and Emergency Department Use in New Jersey
the use of simulation to reduce the length of stay in an emergency department
