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How Do Missing Patients Aggravate Emergency Department Overcrowding? A Real Case and a Simulation Study

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Health Care Systems Engineering for Scientists and Practitioners

Part of the book series: Springer Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistics ((PROMS,volume 169))

Abstract

Emergency department overcrowding has been reported over decades around the globe and the phenomenon is observed to be worsening in recent years. The overcrowding issue will hinder critically-ill patients from accessing timely and adequate medical services, and may result in unnecessary deaths of emergency patients. Furthermore, it may lead to patient dissatisfaction due to the many hours of waiting for consultation. While most studies suggest that there is a mismatch between demand and supply for emergency care and this is the primary factor for the phenomenon, reducing system inefficiency is a possible way to relieve the overcrowding situation when the demand and supply are not adjustable. In this paper, we study the impacts of missing patients, referring to the patients who are not present at the time that they are called for consultation. We conduct a real case study and a simulation study of an emergency department in Hong Kong. We found that even if there is only a small proportion of missing patients and their missing time is short, there is a significant increase in patient waiting time. We suggest that emergency departments should consider to adopt information technology to reduce the inefficiency due to missing patients.

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Acknowledgements

The research of the first author is supported by Microsoft Research Asia Collaborative Research Fund FY15-RES-THEME-049 and Macao Science and Technology Development Fund 088/2013/A3. The research of the second author is partially supported by GRF grant 414313 from the Hong Kong Research Grant Council. The authors would also like to thank Mr. Stones Wong, Operations Manager of the Emergency Department of the Prince of Wales Hospital, for his assistance in data collection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stanley Ho Big Data Decision Analytics Research Centre, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong, China

    Yong-Hong Kuo

  2. Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong, China

    Janny M. Y. Leung

  3. Accident and Emergency Medicine Academic Unit, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong, China

    Colin A. Graham

Authors
  1. Yong-Hong Kuo
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  2. Janny M. Y. Leung
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  3. Colin A. Graham
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yong-Hong Kuo .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Andrea Matta

  2. Laboratoire Génie Industriel Ecole Centrale Paris, Châtenay-Malabry, France

    Evren Sahin

  3. College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

    Jingshan Li

  4. DISP Laboratory, Lyon University, INSA de Lyon, Villeurbanne, France

    Alain Guinet

  5. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Nico J. Vandaele

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Kuo, YH., Leung, J.M.Y., Graham, C.A. (2016). How Do Missing Patients Aggravate Emergency Department Overcrowding? A Real Case and a Simulation Study. In: Matta, A., Sahin, E., Li, J., Guinet, A., Vandaele, N. (eds) Health Care Systems Engineering for Scientists and Practitioners. Springer Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistics, vol 169. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-35132-2_16

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