Abstract 5: Optimizing Emergency Room Throughput for Cardiac Telemetry Patients: A Queuing Theory Approach

Background: The capacity of telemetry monitoring in hospitalized patients is constrained due to limited equipment and personnel. Electing for telemetry monitoring may pose a bottleneck for patients admitted through the Emergency Department (ED). This can result in increased length of stays in the ED, a parameter that is correlated with decreased quality of care due to crowding and delay in treatment. Queuing theory is the mathematical study of waiting times. We opted to use queuing theory to analyze system performance before and after an expansion of telemetry capacity. Objective: To retrospectively analyze the impact of telemetry capacity on ED wait times using enterprise data warehouse (EDW) data and queuing theory. Methods: Unused telemetry boxes were used as a proxy metric for available cardiac telemetry monitoring. The number of telemetry boxes in use at a large urban academic medical center was determined by daily manual count. The number of telemetry admissions, average length of telemetry use, and...