Forecasting hourly emergency department arrival using time series analysis

What is it about?

The stochastic arrival of patients at hospital emergency departments complicates their management. More than 50% of a hospital’s emergency department tends to operate beyond its normal capacity and eventually fails to deliver high-quality care. To address this concern, much research has been carried out using yearly, monthly and weekly time-series forecasting. This article discusses the use of hourly time-series forecasting to help improve emergency department management by predicting the arrival of future patients.

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Photo by Adhy Savala on Unsplash

Photo by Adhy Savala on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The auto-regressive integrated moving average can be used to provide hourly forecasts for emergency department arrivals and can be implemented as a decision support system to aid staff when scheduling and adjusting emergency department arrivals.