Development of Relationship between Triaging of Patients and Emergency Department Performance

Abstract Triage is a very important step in today’s Emergency Departments (EDs). While triage mainly focuses on prioritizing patients based on their medical conditions, this is also an effective management tool to organize, monitor and evaluate the ED patients and resources. As the waiting time of a patient is highly influenced by the triage category, there is a possibility that the length of stay in ED (EDLOS) and overall performance of ED have a relationship with this classification. The main aim of this study is to investigate how the actual ED performance is affected by the number of ED presentations in different triage categories. A comprehensive case study has been conducted and ED patient data of two hospitals in Brisbane have been collected. Based on a statistical analysis of the collected data, a relationship has been identified between the arrival of patients in each category and ED performance. Descriptive statistics have been used to analyze the patients’ data for each category. This result will help in managing the necessary resources to avoid the long waiting times as well as a drop in the performance level. Eventually, the outcome will facilitate the ED practitioners to maintain the quality of care in the health sector and also the patients’ satisfaction.