Healthcare Management: Discussion 1 Reply - Waiting Time in EDs

This discussion board post presents a student's response to a healthcare management discussion, specifically addressing the challenges of emergency department (ED) congestion and prolonged patient waiting times. The student analyzes the negative impacts of these issues, including compromised patient safety, dissatisfaction, and potential for clinical errors. The post references strategies to mitigate these problems, such as implementing triage protocols, adjusting staffing, and restructuring patient flow. It also highlights the importance of considering both internal factors like resource allocation and staff competencies, as well as external factors that influence patient perception and satisfaction. The student emphasizes the need for sustainable solutions and provides examples of initiatives undertaken to reduce waiting times, focusing on the significance of patient satisfaction and quality of care as key performance indicators for healthcare organizations.

Running head: HEALTHCARE MANAGEMENT: REPLY TO DISCUSSION
HEALTHCARE MANAGEMENT: REPLY TO DISCUSSION
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

1HEALTHCARE MANAGEMENT: REPLY TO DISCUSSION
Post 1: Crowding and delayed waiting times not only hinder the quality of care delivered
by the healthcare organization but also administers life threatening consequences to the health of
the patient due to increased susceptibility of clinical errors. Indeed, as rightly stated, lack of
mitigation of delayed waiting times exerts the greatest negative impact on the emergency
department where patients pose high threat of succumbing to their injuries due to traumatic
events or health conditions (Kuo et al. 2016). To alleviate crowding and prolonged waiting time
issues, administration of triaging protocols coupled with time monitoring and enhanced staff
recruitment pose to be innovative suggestions in addition to implementation of educational and
training frameworks (Forshaw et al. 2016). However, the existing resources of the healthcare
organizations along with the financial expenditures required to be incurred for implementation of
above innovations in terms health informatics and staff recruitment are what remains to be
questioned and hence, must be evaluated by healthcare organizations carefully prior to execution
(Munavalli et al. 2019).

2HEALTHCARE MANAGEMENT: REPLY TO DISCUSSION
References
Forshaw, J., Raybould, S., Lewis, E., Muyingo, M., Weeks, A., Reed, K., Manikam, L. and
Byamugisha, J., 2016. Exploring the third delay: an audit evaluating obstetric triage at Mulago
National Referral Hospital. BMC pregnancy and childbirth, 16(1), p.300.
Kuo, Y.H., Rado, O., Lupia, B., Leung, J.M. and Graham, C.A., 2016. Improving the efficiency
of a hospital emergency department: a simulation study with indirectly imputed service-time
distributions. Flexible Services and Manufacturing Journal, 28(1-2), pp.120-147.
Munavalli, J.R., Rao, S.V., Srinivasan, A. and van Merode, G.G., 2019. Integral patient
scheduling in outpatient clinics under demand uncertainty to minimize patient waiting
times. Health informatics journal, p.1460458219832044.

3HEALTHCARE MANAGEMENT: REPLY TO DISCUSSION
Post 2: Waiting times are directly linked with perceptions of healthcare quality and
satisfaction across patients. Hence, healthcare organizations must immediately address this
menace to prevent negative customer feedback, poor ratings and consequent losses in the
healthcare scenario in comparison to their competitors (Mustafa, Salim and Watson 2018). In
addition to triaging protocols, re-structuring of existing schedules such as segregating admissions
between emergency and non-emergency patients and maintenance of quick discharge processes
may also prove to be helpful. Further, as correctly stated, the team structuring of existing staff
into care management or emergency teams may be a cost effective alternative to staff recruitment
(Shi et al. 2015). However, sustainability of such processes, especially in case of novel
technology implementation, administration of auditing and quality monitoring frameworks such
as process analysis by healthcare as well as IT (Information Technology) professionals, may also
be required to ensure maintenance of correct functioning of equipment and culture of time
management among workers, especially during triaging (Partington et al. 2015).

4HEALTHCARE MANAGEMENT: REPLY TO DISCUSSION
References
Mustafa, N., Salim, T.A. and Watson, A., 2018. The Impact of Waiting Time on Hospital
Service Perception and Satisfaction: The moderating role of Gender. International Journal of
Business & Management Science, 8(1).
Partington, A., Wynn, M., Suriadi, S., Ouyang, C. and Karnon, J., 2015. Process mining for
clinical processes: a comparative analysis of four Australian hospitals. ACM Transactions on
Management Information Systems (TMIS), 5(4), p.19.
Shi, P., Chou, M.C., Dai, J.G., Ding, D. and Sim, J., 2015. Models and insights for hospital
inpatient operations: Time-dependent ED boarding time. Management Science, 62(1), pp.1-28.