Using Hospital Admission Predictions at Triage for Improving Patient Length of Stay in Emergency Departments

In emergency departments (EDs), one of the major reasons behind long waiting times and crowding overall is the time it takes to move admitted patients from the ED to an appropriate bed in the main hospital. In “Using Hospital Admission Predictions at Triage for Improving Patient Length of Stay in Emergency Departments,” Chen et al. develop a methodology that can be used to shorten these times by predicting the likelihood of admission for each patient at the time of triage and starting the process of identifying a suitable hospital bed and making preparations for the patient’s eventual transfer to the bed right away if the predicted probability of admission is deemed high enough. A simulation study suggests that the proposed methodology, particularly when it takes into account ED census levels, has the potential to shorten average waiting times in the ED without leading to too many false early bed requests.