The research objective of this collaborative Advancing Health Services through System Modeling Research project is to establish an analytical framework for modeling the rapid response process in acute care delivery and using this framework to improve the efficacy of rapid response operations and patient safety. Specifically, it will develop analytical methods for performance evaluation, bottleneck identification, and optimal workforce configuration and response activation protocols. The approach of this research is based on analytical investigation of the stochastic processes that describe the rapid response operations which are modeled as complex networks with split, merge and parallel structures. The challenge of this research is in developing effective methods to deal with the complexity of system modeling, analysis, improvement, and optimization based on the collected data.
If successful, the results of this research will be a novel analytical method to study patient care and safety in acute care delivery, and to provide insights for improving the efficacy of rapid response operations. It will enable us to uncover the fundamental principles governing care delivery processes and utilize them for analysis, continuous improvement, and design to improve patient safety and care quality. This research will provide hospital leadership and healthcare professionals with a quantitative tool for improving rapid response operations. It will not only be vital for acute care, but also useful to other hospital divisions and the entire American healthcare industry, and is transformable to other systems, such as civil emergency response systems, critical supply chains, and information networks.
