Process Flow Analysis in the Emergency Department of a Tertiary Care Hospital using Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)

Abstract

The Emergency Department of a hospital is considered to be the most critical area; any delay in patient care may result in serious consequences and cost to life. Operations Research tools can help hospitals improve quality, reduce costs, improve effectiveness and increase efficiency serving in managerial decision-making. The present study is conducted in the emergency department of a tertiary care teaching hospital to understand the different process flows of the department with respect to the Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT). The aim of this article is to find the critical path, expected completion time, variance of the path and different slack timings associated with the emergency care provided in the emergency department. An exploratory research with sample of 100 patients randomly selected from a population of 460 was observed for two months to collect the primary data. The timings for the different activities were noted using a stop watch. Findings through application of PERT revealed the expected time for completion of the project was 84.89 minutes and the variance of the project was 253.1 minutes. All the activities are with zero or positive float value and no activity has a negative float value signifying the emergency process is either ahead of the schedule or on schedule.