ArticleBMC health services research2020
Waiting times in emergency departments: a resource allocation or an efficiency issue?
Article in BMC health services research, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- Emergency department crowding in the modern era: a systematic review (2018-2025).Clinical and experimental emergency medicine · 2026Pooled it
- Patient flow in emergency departments: a comprehensive umbrella review of solutions and challenges across the health system.BMC health services research · 2024Pooled it
- Feasibility, comprehension and applicability of broad consent in the emergency department: an exploratory mixed-methods study.Journal of medical ethics · 2026Article
- Reducing unnecessary bed days to optimise flow and improve demand-capacity mismatch: learning from a system-wide patient flow collaborative.BMJ open quality · 2026Article
- Emergency departments under fire: analysing the impact of heat on waiting time.The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2026Article
- Is wait a hard word for the patient? The impact of waiting time on revisit decisions in patients with respiratory infectious diseases in the post-epidemic era - findings from fever clinics in China.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Moral distress in emergency nurses: a qualitative systematic review and meta-synthesis protocol.BMJ open · 2025Article
- "A banana in the tailpipe": a qualitative study of patient flow in the healthcare system.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Barriers to and Facilitators of Technology Adoption in Emergency Departments: A Comprehensive Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Review
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- Solutions for improved hospital-wide patient flows - a qualitative interview study of leading healthcare providers.BMC health services research · 2023Article
- Hospital complications among older adults: Better processes could reduce the risk of delirium.Health services management research · 2022Article
- ES-RED (Early Seizure Recurrence in the Emergency Department) Calculator: A Triage Tool for Seizure Patients.Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Article
- An Analysis of Waiting Time for Emergency Treatment and Optimal Allocation of Nursing Manpower.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Validity of Wait Time Complaints and Effect of Trainee Presence in an Ophthalmic Emergency Department.Clinical ophthalmology (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2022Article
- Reduction of the emergency activity, during the Covid 19 Italian lockdown, what's the lesson to learn?Health policy (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIn recent years, the flow of patients to the Emergency Departments (ED) of Western countries has steadily increased, thus generating overcrowding and extended waiting times. Scholars have identified four main causes for this phenomenon, related to: continuity of primary care services; availability of specific clinical pathways for chronic patients; ED's personnel endowment; organization of the ED. This study aims at providing a logical diagnostic framework to support managers in investigating specific solutions to be applied to their EDs to cope with high ED waiting times. The framework is based on the ED waiting times and ED admission rate matrix. It was applied to the Tuscan EDs as illustrative example.
methodsTo provide the factors to be analyzed once the EDs are positioned into the matrix, a list of issues has been identified. The matrix was applied to Tuscan EDs. Data were collected from the Tuscan performance evaluation system, integrated with specific data on Tuscan EDs' personnel. The Tuscan EDs matrix, the descriptive statistics for each quadrant and the Spearman's rank correlation analysis among waiting times, admission rates and a set of performance indicators were conducted to help managers to read the phenomena that they need to investigate.
resultsThe combined reading of the correlations and waiting times-admission rates matrix shows that there are no optimal rules for all the EDs in managing admission rates and waiting times, but solutions have to be found considering mixed and personalized strategies.
conclusionsThe waiting times-admission rates matrix provides a tool able to support managers in detecting the problems related to the management of ED services. In particular, using this matrix, healthcare managers could be facilitated in the identification of possible solutions for their specific situation.
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