Emergency department (ED) managers face staffing challenges due to the nature of the department—people usually don’t plan a trip to the ED. Since most patients arrive in the ED unexpectedly, it may appear as though managers have to plan staffing without insight into patient volume variation.
ED managers often wish they had a crystal ball to make predictions. At Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) a team has found the next best thing, using data to uncover trends in care, predict when to expect variation in volume and determine how to staff for volume change. The team can see how patient volume may rise and fall months at a time or on a seasonal basis. Volume on each day of the week can have a pattern too.
CHA analysts compared four staffing criteria from PROSPECT to identify high-performing pediatric EDs, and CHOP emerged as one of the top four hospitals.
