报告时间：12月26日9:30-11:30

报告地点：科学园2H425

报告题目：Patient sensitivity to emergency department waiting time announcements

报告摘要

We analyze the effectiveness of emergency department (ED) waiting time (WT) announcement systems in Hong Kong's public healthcare. We address three key questions: (1) How many patients are aware of and responsive to WT announcements? (2) What is their sensitivity to these announcements? (3) How can the system be improved?

Using data from over 1.3 million patient visits to 17 tier-one EDs, we find that only 3.1% of patients are sensitive to WT announcements, willing to travel an additional 4.8 km to reduce wait times by one hour. Urgent patients are less likely to respond, yet sensitive patients show greater aversion to waiting.

Counterfactual analysis indicates that increasing the sensitive patient fraction to 15% and shortening the WT assessment window from three hours to one could reduce average wait times by 4.6% and patients leaving without being seen by 8.5%. Additionally, providing predicted WT information based on current crowding could enhance system performance.

报告人简介

欧阳会银博士是香港大学商学院运营管理助理教授。在清华大学获得学士和硕士学位，并在北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校获得统计学和运筹学博士学位。在加入香港大学商学院之前，欧阳博士曾在西北大学工业工程与管理科学系担任博士后研究员。她的研究集中在服务系统的随机建模与分析、医疗运营、仿真分析和数据驱动决策制定。研究成果已发表在Operations Research, Management Science, and Manufacturing & Service Operations等顶级期刊上。