Improving patient flow in emergency department through dynamic priority queue
Most queuing problems are based on FIFO, LIFO, or static priority queues; very few address dynamic priority queues. In this paper, we present a case in a hospital’s emergency department (ED) where the queuing process can be modeled as a time-varying M/M/s queue with re-entrant patients. In order to...
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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | text |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University
2012
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/3317 https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/4319/viewcontent/ImprovingPatientFlowEmergencyDepartment_2012_CASE.pdf |
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| Institution: | Singapore Management University |
| Language: | English |
| Summary: | Most queuing problems are based on FIFO, LIFO, or static priority queues; very few address dynamic priority queues. In this paper, we present a case in a hospital’s emergency department (ED) where the queuing process can be modeled as a time-varying M/M/s queue with re-entrant patients. In order to improve patient flow in the department, we propose the use of a dynamic priority queue to dispatch patients to consultation with doctors. We test our proposed model using simulation and our experimental results show that a dynamic priority queue is effective in reducing the length of stay (LOS) of patients and hence improving patient flow. Furthermore, we show that a hybrid scheme is effective in preventing starvation. |
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