ArticleBMC medical research methodology2026
Triage effectiveness: a framework for quantifying the effect of emergency triage prioritization.
Article in BMC medical research methodology, 2026. 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.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundEmergency departments use triage to identify time-critical patients and reduce waiting times by assigning higher priority. However, no existing method directly measures this core clinical function. We developed and validated Triage Effectiveness (TE) as a framework for quantifying how well triage systems reduce waiting times for time-critical patients.
methodsUsing data from 463,209 visits across eight emergency departments, we developed TE as a scale where 0% equals a first-come-first-serve strategy (no triage) and 100% equals perfect prioritization. The framework includes two complementary measures: 1. Waiting Time-based TE (WTE) measuring actual waiting time reduction, where 100% represents zero waiting time, and 2. Rank-based TE (RTE) measuring queue position improvement where 100% represents placement first in queue. Both can be calculated as theoretical TE (based only on priorities) and observed TE (actual clinical performance). We validated WTE and RTE calculations using analytical queueing models adapted for classification uncertainty and assessed transferability across hospitals.
resultsQueueing theory validation showed strong alignment with both WTE and RTE calculations, with RTE demonstrating greater robustness and less sensitivity to ED utilization patterns. TE increased with accuracy and produced negative values when triage performance was worse than chance. When applying the framework we found substantial gaps between theoretical and observed TE across all emergency departments, indicating significant post triage reprioritization.
conclusionsThe TE framework provides the first method for directly measuring the effectiveness of triage while utilizing full ordinal priority information. TE can assess the effectiveness of initial triage and the impact of post-triage re-prioritization.
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