Facilitating Decision Support in Hospital Emergency Departments: A Process-Oriented Perspective

Information systems exist for emergency departments (EDIS’), but even the most sophisticated ones concentrate on relatively simple coordination, resource allocation and documentation aspects of emergency department operations. There is little emphasis on management of the treatment process or optimization of resource use because definitive models do not exist for patient treatment processes. This paper outlines the identification of emergency department treatment processes and discusses how this treatment process perspective assists in framing optimization of resource utilisation, clinical decision making, training and emergency department layout.