Observational studyJournal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA2025
Improved intrahospital transport time via proximity-based staff assignments.
Observational study in Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- People and organizations: the human side of biomedical and health informatics.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIntrahospital patient transport is pivotal in enabling hospital operations and facilitating safe and efficient patient movement. However, transport delays are common in hospitals, signaling a need for improvement. This study develops, implements, and evaluates a proximity-based transporter-to-request assignment system aimed at improving transport service system efficiency. MATERIALS AND
methodsIn this observational study, we used discrete-event simulation to design and optimize an enhancement to an electronic medical record's original first-in, first-out transporter-to-request assignment system, and we implemented it at a quaternary care academic medical center. Our enhancement prioritizes requests based on the proximity of available transporters within pre-specified areas. We compared transport request completion time (primary outcome) and the percentage of transports exceeding 45 minutes (secondary outcome) during control (01/2021-02/2022) and intervention (02/2022-03/2023) periods and estimated their differences using multivariate generalized linear models to adjust for confounding factors including variable workforce levels and workload.
resultsA total of 136 414 transport requests were included in the study. The intervention was associated with an adjusted 5.0% (95% confidence interval 1.8%-8.5%) reduction in completion times and a 16.0% (7.4%-23.9%) relative reduction in the percentage of trips exceeding the 45-minute completion time target. DISCUSSION: The intervention's improvements stem from reductions in unnecessary travel time between transport requests, common to first-in first-out assignment systems. The intervention was designed to be natively integrated into existing electronic health record systems, reducing barriers to real-world adoption.
conclusionImplementing a proximity-based assignment system designed based on simulation-optimization modeling improved intrahospital patient transport efficiency without requiring additional staff.
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Registered trials
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