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Emergency Department Staff Planning to Improve Patient Care and Reduce Costs
Author(s) -
Ganguly Subhamoy,
Lawrence Stephen,
Prather Mark
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
decision sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.238
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 1540-5915
pISSN - 0011-7315
DOI - 10.1111/deci.12060
Subject(s) - staffing , emergency department , scheduling (production processes) , operations management , computer science , patient care , plan (archaeology) , service (business) , operations research , business , medical emergency , nursing , medicine , marketing , economics , archaeology , engineering , history
In the face of high staffing costs, uncertain patient arrivals, and patients unsatisfied with long wait times, staffing of medical emergency departments (EDs) is a vexing problem. Using empirical data collected from three active EDs, we develop an analytic model to provide an effective staffing plan for EDs. Patient demand is aggregated into discrete time buckets and used to model the stochastic distribution of patient demand within these buckets, which considerably improves model tractability. This model is capable of scheduling providers with different skill profiles who work either individually or in teams, and with patients of varying acuity levels. We show how our model helps to balance staffing costs and patient service levels, and how it facilitates examination of important ED staffing policies.