Improve Response-Time Performance of Rapid Response Process in Acute Care: A System-Theoretic Method

Abstract

In order to improve the response time performance (RTP) of rapid response process in acute care delivery, an analytical model and system-theoretic method are introduced to study the response time performance. The analytical model is used to systematically describe the rapid response process, the decomposition method and the assumption that each step is approximate to gamma distribution are used to evaluate the response time performance (RTP). The results show that compared with previous studies, this method can evaluate the response time performance more quickly and accurately, and then improve the emergency efficiency of medical staffs and the safety of patients in acute care delivery. In addition, we study the system characteristics such as monotonicity and bottleneck analysis, and verify the feasibility of gamma approximate distribution. According to the data collected in University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital, further verify the accuracy of the model. Besides, compared with the previous model in the effectiveness and computational efficiency of RTP, which shows that the model in this paper is more effective in RTP evaluation and has more faster computing efficiency. After that, make improvement analysis to determine the biggest bottleneck of the rapid response process and improve to improve the decision-making efficiency. What-if analysis, consider the impact of other parameters on response time performance (RTP). Finally, the future research direction is discussed. potential future work to extend the study is discussed.