Improving rapid response operations in acute care delivery - part I: System modeling and performance evaluation

The number of potentially preventable hospital deaths in the US is astonishingly high. To improve patient safety and reduce hospital mortality, rapid response teams have been developed and implemented to provide a quick evaluation and treatment to patients with clinical signs of deterioration. In this paper, we present a preliminary study on modeling and analysis of the rapid response process in acute care delivery. Specifically, such a process is modeled as a complex network with split, merge and parallel structures. An analytical model is developed to evaluate the mean and variability of the decision time in the system, as well as the probability that such a decision is made within a desired time interval. In addition, system theoretic properties are investigated to provide directions for performance improvement.