Thematic Issues in Analysis and Visualization of Emergency Department Patient Flow

Emergency Department (ED) congestion is a significant problem affecting clinical outcomes, patient satisfaction and hospital costs. Identifying and resolving bottlenecks in the flow of patients from the ED to eventual admission or discharge has the potential to reduce wait times, improve care for individual patients, and increase the volume of patients treated at the hospital over time. Our objective was to review methods commonly used to measure, analyze, and visualize patient flow, characterize drawbacks to these methods, and identify areas in which analysis and visualization can be improved to make bottlenecks easier to identify and resolve. Sixty-five articles obtained from PubMed and Google Scholar searches were reviewed to identify: (1) variables used to measure ED throughput; (2) downstream effects of ED congestion; (3) factors contributing to ED congestion; (4) techniques used to predict or respond to ED congestion; and (5) tools used to visualize data on ED throughput. Hospital resource availability, patient demographics, and environmental factors have all been used to predict contributors to ED congestion. Unfortunately, the hospital practices most critical to ED congestion are unlikely to change as they involve increasing the number of beds and providers or modifying protocols with EMS, insurance, and other care facilities. Therefore, interventions addressing optimization of ED resource allocation and visualization of ED data are the best avenue to yield more efficient ED operation.