ArticleJournal of emergencies, trauma, and shock
Application of Queuing Theory to Optimize the Triage Process in a Tertiary Emergency Care ("ER") Department.
Article in Journal of emergencies, trauma, and shock. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 22 citations in OpenAlex.
- Identifying barriers and facilitators to implementing triage systems in low- and middle-income countries: A scoping review.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Multiagent AI Systems in Health Care: Envisioning Next-Generation Intelligence.Federal practitioner : for the health care professionals of the VA, DoD, and PHS · 2025Article
- Enhancing Mass Vaccination Programs with Queueing Theory and Spatial Optimization.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- Enhancing mass vaccination programs with queueing theory and spatial optimization.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Influence of Prehospital Emergency Care on Rescue Success Rate and Complication Rate of Senile Patients with Acute Myocardial Infarction.Computational and mathematical methods in medicine · 2022Article
- Queueing Theory and COVID-19 Prevention: Model Proposal to Maximize Safety and Performance of Vaccination Sites.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
- Clinical Effectiveness of Pre-hospital and In-hospital Optimized Emergency Care Procedures for Patients With Acute Craniocerebral Trauma.Frontiers in surgery · 2021Article
- Adjusting Daily Inpatient Bed Allocation to Smooth Emergency Department Occupancy Variation.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
contextTime from triage to patient care is usually evaluated, but time elapsed between the arrival of patient to emergency room (ER) and triage (pretriage) is not usually measured.
aimsThe present study evaluates how the application of the queuing (or "waiting line") theory in the triage process can generate effective strategies to improve patient care in the ER. SETTINGS AND
designA "before-and-after" study was conducted in the ER of the Hospital Universitario San Ignacio, a tertiary emergency care in Bogotá, Colombia. SUBJECTS AND
methodsThe pretriage time was evaluated, and queuing theory was applied to the evaluation; according to the results, the number and distribution of the necessary nursing personnel were determined. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS USED: The change in waiting times was compared using a paired
resultsIn a first 7 months evaluation period, 89,898 patient visits were considered, with an average pretriage time of 22.15 min. According to the arrival distribution by hours and days of the week and considering the results of the calculations made using queuing theory, the number of nurses needed in the service per hour was determined for each day of the week, and schedule changes were implemented without increasing staff. In a second similar evaluation period, 94,497 patient visits were considered demonstrating a reduction of the pretriage time to 7.5 min (mean difference 14.64 min, 95% confidence interval 14.42-14.85,
conclusionsThe use of queuing theory in the planning of the daily personnel requirements in the triage area of ER can reduce the pretriage time by 65% without incurring additional cost.
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