Reducing Waiting Time in a Hospital Emergency Room (ER)
Patients spend much time waiting in a hospital emergency room because of different reasons: the necessity to pass through a triage process, a shortage of nursing staff, or patients’ inabilities to formulate their problems properly. The waiting period may impact someone’s life or the way of treatment considerably. The current paper introduces an operations management model that can be applied to the hospital Emergency Room to reduce ER waiting periods.
Inputs
- Material: It is necessary to provide the ER department with four additional computers with access to the Internet and five beds at the beginning of the model’s implementation.
- Information: Before the implementation of the program, it is necessary to find out and analyze the facts about the current technologies, patient demand, and required service quality.
- Customers: This model touches upon the patients, who are going to address the ER and suffer from spending too much time waiting for a service, and the nurses, who have to work under pressure of time and patient inability to control their own needs.
- Facilities: A hospital with an ER department within the frames of which the triage process is organized and makes patients spend much time waiting is chosen.
- Staff: A team consists of one leader, who controls all processes, one manager to questionnaire nurses and patients about the quality of the ER work, one manager to analyze information gathered by the former manager and look for some additional information online, one IT expert to improve online services, and one nurse to check the efficiency of the model, and two additional registered nurses to participate in the model offered.
Design
- Evaluation of the waiting time;
- Development of online services using which patients can leave certain information about themselves before they visit a hospital;
- One additional nurse meets people and considers a patient’s condition and abilities to provide information;
- Another additional nurse controls the arrivals of patients, who leave some information about their approximate time of visit beforehand;
- Constant access to the Internet is necessary;
- Several beds are free for patients, who are in their way.
Planning and Control
The model depends on the quality of the online services available. Nowadays, people usually have an access to the Internet everywhere; this is why it is possible to create a program that can be used by patients or some people next to them to give the necessary information and spend less time waiting for a nurse in the ER but be directed to the necessary doctor. Patients should also be informed beforehand that the information they give influences the quality of their further treatment. Two nurses (who change each other from time to time) work with the information received online and inform the staff about coming patients and their problems.
Improvement
The implementation of the model will help to reduce the waiting time in the ER considerably. People do not need to wait for a nurse to gather information and appoint a doctor. Patients (if they have more or less appropriate physical condition) have a chance to give the necessary information on their own and reduce the time of communication with a nurse. They can be also redirected to the bed available.
Operation’s Strategy
The technological improvement of the ER department is a strategy that helps to reduce the waiting time. The main aim is to offer patients a choice whether to wait in a queue or share personal information on their own through the Internet. It will help to reduce the length of the triage process.
Operation’s Strategic Objectives
The strategy helps to meet the following goals:
- Reduce the waiting time;
- Deprive nurses of the necessity to spend much time on gathering some general information about a patient but focuses on his/her current state;
- Help patients to be sure of the personal information necessary for their treatment.
Operation’s Competitive Role and Position
There are not many effective ideas on how to reduce the waiting time in a hospital ER. This is why the offered model based on the technological improvement and widening participation of patients in the triage process seems to be competitive indeed. Its position in the system has to be re-evaluated and introduced as the one that can help people receive the necessary treatment faster.
Output
In general, patients get a chance to save their time giving information about themselves on their own. Nurses need to be more qualified from an IT point of view to evaluate and consider the information they get from patients online.
Operation’s Characteristics
- Volume: it is possible to use two additional computers available for patients within a hospital and one additional computer to analyze the info got online.
- Variety: patients are free to choose their initial treatment steps. If they want to reduce their waiting time, they can start the triage process independently and give the necessary information about themselves beforehand.
- Demand variations: Time is what people demand to save. The model helps patients to understand how they can reduce the waiting time.
- Visibility: Nurse-patient cooperation is high because nurses have to trust the information patients leave, and patients should realize their level of responsibility when they leave personal information online as a basis for their treatment.