Design a system to predict emergency room waiting time

Resume

How do you design a system that accurate predict emergency room (ED) waiting time in a crowed environment and displays it in an easy understandable way for patients or the accompanying persons?

Resultat

Præsentation af løsning.

Beskrivelse af casen

Crowding of the (ED) has become an increasing problem for hospitals around the world. This has multiple effects, including poor patient outcomes, prolonged pain, patient dissatisfaction, patients leaving without being seen, increased frustration among medical staff, and violence.

Patients or accompanying persons accepts waiting time at the ED to a certain extend if the perceived information is understandable and seems fair. For example a case with someone brought in from a severe car accident.

When patients arrive to our ED all patients are evaluated by a nurse and assigned a triage color. Triage is done according to Danish Emergency Process Triage (DEPT) The most severe patients that requires immediately attention by doctors and nurses are assigned the color red followed by orange – yellow – green and blue.

Accumulated waiting

Accumulated waiting does also decide when a patient is treated. Region Hovedstaden has decided that all patients should be treated within:

  • Triage color red: Immediately
  • Triage color orange: 10 minutes
  • Triage color yellow: 60 minutes
  • Triage color: green or blue 240 minutes

Whenever a new patient is refereed to us we do not know triage status before a nursed has evaluated the patient.
We receive between 140 and 200 patients a day. Our rush hour is from early afternoon to around 2 a.m. but later on weekends.

Both Region Hovedstaden and Sjælland are using electronic record in Epic (Sundhedsplatformen). The solution should be able to function with Epic preferably be integrated with Epic and display wating time in our ED waiting room.