Patient Flow from Emergency Department to Inpatient Wards: Empirical Observations from a Singaporean Hospital

Abstract

This document presents a comprehensive empirical study on the inpatient flow management in a Singaporean hospital. The empirical study uses high resolution patient flow data from 2008 to 2010. This document details the statistics of waiting times for patients admitted from the emergence department (ED) to inpatient wards, bed occupancy rate of the inpatient wards, and overflow proportions (proportions of patients that are admitted to a non-primary ward). The document also reports various statistics related to patient arrival, inpatient discharge, length of stay (LOS), and pre- and post-allocation delays incurred during the bed-assignment process.

Keywords: empirical study; ED boarding; inpatient flow management; hospital inpatient operations