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Adjusting Daily Inpatient Bed Allocation to Smooth Emergency Department Occupancy Variation
Study Objective: Overcrowding in emergency departments (ED) is an increasingly common problem in Taiwanese hospitals, and strategies to improve efficiency are in demand. We propose a bed resource allocation strategy to overcome the overcrowding problem. Method: We investigated ED occupancy using dis...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7349152/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32231146 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare8020078 |
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author | Tsai, Jeffrey Che-Hung Weng, Shao-Jen Liu, Shih-Chia Tsai, Yao-Te Gotcher, Donald F. Chen, Chih-Hao Chou, Chun-An Kim, Seung-Hwan |
author_facet | Tsai, Jeffrey Che-Hung Weng, Shao-Jen Liu, Shih-Chia Tsai, Yao-Te Gotcher, Donald F. Chen, Chih-Hao Chou, Chun-An Kim, Seung-Hwan |
author_sort | Tsai, Jeffrey Che-Hung |
collection | PubMed |
description | Study Objective: Overcrowding in emergency departments (ED) is an increasingly common problem in Taiwanese hospitals, and strategies to improve efficiency are in demand. We propose a bed resource allocation strategy to overcome the overcrowding problem. Method: We investigated ED occupancy using discrete-event simulation and evaluated the effects of suppressing day-to-day variations in ED occupancy by adjusting the number of empty beds per day. Administrative data recorded at the ED of Taichung Veterans General Hospital (TCVGH) in Taiwan with 1500 beds and an annual ED volume of 66,000 visits were analyzed. Key indices of ED quality in the analysis were the length of stay and the time in waiting for outward transfers to in-patient beds. The model is able to analyze and compare several scenarios for finding a feasible allocation strategy. Results: We compared several scenarios, and the results showed that by reducing the allocated beds for the ED by 20% on weekdays, the variance of daily ED occupancy was reduced by 36.25% (i.e., the percentage of reduction in standard deviation). Conclusions: This new allocation strategy was able to both reduce the average ED occupancy and maintain the ED quality indices. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7349152 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-73491522020-07-22 Adjusting Daily Inpatient Bed Allocation to Smooth Emergency Department Occupancy Variation Tsai, Jeffrey Che-Hung Weng, Shao-Jen Liu, Shih-Chia Tsai, Yao-Te Gotcher, Donald F. Chen, Chih-Hao Chou, Chun-An Kim, Seung-Hwan Healthcare (Basel) Article Study Objective: Overcrowding in emergency departments (ED) is an increasingly common problem in Taiwanese hospitals, and strategies to improve efficiency are in demand. We propose a bed resource allocation strategy to overcome the overcrowding problem. Method: We investigated ED occupancy using discrete-event simulation and evaluated the effects of suppressing day-to-day variations in ED occupancy by adjusting the number of empty beds per day. Administrative data recorded at the ED of Taichung Veterans General Hospital (TCVGH) in Taiwan with 1500 beds and an annual ED volume of 66,000 visits were analyzed. Key indices of ED quality in the analysis were the length of stay and the time in waiting for outward transfers to in-patient beds. The model is able to analyze and compare several scenarios for finding a feasible allocation strategy. Results: We compared several scenarios, and the results showed that by reducing the allocated beds for the ED by 20% on weekdays, the variance of daily ED occupancy was reduced by 36.25% (i.e., the percentage of reduction in standard deviation). Conclusions: This new allocation strategy was able to both reduce the average ED occupancy and maintain the ED quality indices. MDPI 2020-03-28 /pmc/articles/PMC7349152/ /pubmed/32231146 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare8020078 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Tsai, Jeffrey Che-Hung Weng, Shao-Jen Liu, Shih-Chia Tsai, Yao-Te Gotcher, Donald F. Chen, Chih-Hao Chou, Chun-An Kim, Seung-Hwan Adjusting Daily Inpatient Bed Allocation to Smooth Emergency Department Occupancy Variation |
title | Adjusting Daily Inpatient Bed Allocation to Smooth Emergency Department Occupancy Variation |
title_full | Adjusting Daily Inpatient Bed Allocation to Smooth Emergency Department Occupancy Variation |
title_fullStr | Adjusting Daily Inpatient Bed Allocation to Smooth Emergency Department Occupancy Variation |
title_full_unstemmed | Adjusting Daily Inpatient Bed Allocation to Smooth Emergency Department Occupancy Variation |
title_short | Adjusting Daily Inpatient Bed Allocation to Smooth Emergency Department Occupancy Variation |
title_sort | adjusting daily inpatient bed allocation to smooth emergency department occupancy variation |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7349152/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32231146 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare8020078 |
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