Research Seminar
Specialist Response Policies to Reduce Waiting Times in Emergency Departments
| Abstract: | This paper aims to reduce the length of stay (LOS) in Emergency Departments (EDs) by designing a systematic response policy for various specialists depending on the demands of their consultation. We model the specialist consultation (SC) demands via non-homogeneous Poisson process of a daily cycle; and then based on the martingale representation theorem, we figure out the optimal SC start times for a Fixed Time (FT) policy, in order to minimize the average per-person wait time. We further compare FT policy with several alternative policies for specialists' response to consultation requests, and propose a guideline of different SC policies depending on demand volume and the duration of SCs. Moreover, using the framework of a tandem queueing network, we recommend a patient scheduling rule to incorporate with the existing triage, so that the patients requiring SC following FT can be ensured ready for SC by the specialist' arrival. The feasibility of this patient scheduling and optimal timing policies are guaranteed by an accurate prediction of ED patients' likelihood of requiring SC with their clinical information available in our empirical study. Finally, we validate our analytical results through numerical experiments and a comprehensive simulation model using ED visit record data from two Montreal hospitals of varied scales. The simulation shows that our proposed optimal times in a FT policy can reduce the wait time for specialists by 13%, and the patient scheduling together with optimal time results in a 20% decrease in total wait time. |
| Date: | Oct 25 (Thu), 2018 11:00 am - 12:30 pm |
| Time: | 11:00AM - 12:30PM |
| Speaker: |
Dr. Cheng Zhu McGill University |
| Venue: | Room 7-208, 7/F, Lau Ming Wai Academic Building |
+852 3442-8989
+852 3442-0151
