Modeling and Analysis of the Waiting Time of Rapid Response Process in Acute Care

To ensure patient safety, many hospitals have implemented rapid response process to provide care to acute patients who experience acute physiological deterioration. However, those patients sometimes have to wait for a long time before an appropriate decision can be made, due to low availability of care providers. In this letter, we develop an analytical model with the objective of reducing patient waiting time. A method to evaluate patient waiting time during deterioration process is presented. Structural properties are discussed. Continuous improvement issues are investigated by introducing an indicator to identify the bottleneck care provider whose response time reduction could lead to the largest decrease in patient waiting time. A simple approximation formula of bottleneck indicator is derived. Finally, a set of numerical experiments are performed to validate the model.