Patient Pathways Discovery and Analysis Using Process Mining Techniques: An Emergency Department Case Study

Acute hospitals are currently facing major pressures due to rising demand, caused by population growth, ageing and high expectations of service quality. Simulation studies have been used to overcome these challenges and to drive improvements. However, the majority of these studies derive their process models manually which is not only unrealistic but also time-consuming. Based on process mining, this paper presents a methodology to analyze the complexity of patients flow within an emergency department. Based on patients event log, process mining techniques are used in this paper to discover the actual patient pathways; understand the high variance in patient pathways taken by diverse groups of patients; and gain insights into bottlenecks and resource utilization. The work is a step forward towards minimizing the latency in the decision making process in such complex healthcare systems.