Length of stay reduction in the emergency department and its quantification using complex network theory

Overcrowding in emergency department (ED) has become an increasingly significant problem worldwide. Different crowding measures have been proposed in the literature and, between them, the length of stay (LOS) is one of the most recognised. In this paper the LOS in the ED of a hospital located in the southern central region of Italy is calculated; than the ED process is represented as a network and, due to the identification of the bottleneck node, possibilities to reduce the LOS through changes to the actual process can be identified. The present work demonstrates that the LOS reductions obtained by process changes and measured by the analytical LOS calculations can be assessed also through the changes in the topological properties of the activities network, that are measured using complex network measures.