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In
many hospitals transport requests are planned and scheduled
manually in a central dispatch office. A request for transportation
is typically handled as follows (see also the figure).
-
A hospital department or treatment
unit books a transport request by calling the operator at
the central dispatch office.
- The operator registers all data relevant to the request
(patient information and specific transport requirements).
The operator assigns the request on a first-come-first-served
basis (FCFS) to the next available vehicle or transportation
team. Naturally, emergency requests are handled separately,
for example by immediately notifying a given vehicle crew
via a beeper.
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- A vehicle or a transportation team providing
services on foot (e.g. transporting patients on stretchers,
pushing patients in wheelchairs, and escorting patients on
foot to various destinations) may be assigned multiple requests
and only calls the central dispatch office upon completion
of all jobs.
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- Transports are frequently delayed resulting
in undesired patient waiting times and idle times at the treatment
units awaiting the patients.
- To avoid empty trips, sometimes staff carry
patients without explicit notification from the dispatcher.
As a result, double dispatching occurs when the operator assigns
the same transport request to another vehicle.
- Transport service staff work at their capacities.
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- Hospital units have restricted or almost
no access to the status of their booked requests.
- In the absence of an electronic order processing
system it is not possible to automatically create management
records of the completed journeys by the end of the day. Consequently,
the quality of the services provided cannot be assessed, and
it is very difficult to identify bottlenecks and to propose
improvements.
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