Issue link: https://industrialengineer.epubxp.com/i/920036
January 2018 | ISE Magazine 55 IISE Transactions is IISE's flagship research journal and is published monthly. It aims to foster exchange among researchers and practitioners in the industrial engineering community by publishing papers that are grounded in science and mathematics and motivated by engineering applications. IISE Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering is a quarterly, refereed journal that publishes papers about the application of industrial engineering tools and techniques to healthcare systems. To subscribe, call (800) 494-0460 or (770) 449-0460. About the journals Hyojung Kang (from left), Harriet Nembhard, Christopher DeFlitch and Kalyan Pasupathy showed how data envelopment analysis can help officials decide what resources to invest in to help emergency departments. Data envelopment analysis can help emergency departments make better investment decisions Many delays in emergency department patient flow represent not only opera- tional problems within the emergency department but upstream system prob- lems that result from scale or staffing problems. Most metrics for emergency depart- ment efficiency tend to focus on indi- vidual time-based quality measures and often fail to consider nonmodifiable characteristics that affect production processes. Therefore, having a method that considers departmental or organi- zational-specific factors and evaluates their performance in comparison with peer organizations could help health- care organizations determine if patient flow and access results from scale inef- ficiency and/or technical inefficiencies. In "Assessment of emergency depart- ment efficiency using data envelopment analysis," Hyojung Kang of the Uni- versity of Virginia, Harriet Nembhard of Oregon State University, Christo- pher DeFlitch of Penn State's Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and Kalyan Pasupathy of Mayo College of Medi- cine established the viability of using data envelopment analysis to evaluate the overall scale and technical efficien- cies of emergency departments in the U.S. and determine the significant ex- ogenous factors affecting the technical efficiency of emergency departments. From the data envelopment analy- sis, the authors concluded that many emergency departments may not need to modify the size of their operations to improve efficiency. Instead, they may need to focus their efforts on re- engineering their processes to use their inputs more efficiently. Data envelopment analysis represents a novel way of integrating existing key performance indicators (KPIs) with data that are specific to the work unit or or- ganization. By identifying and account- ing for both modifiable and nonmodi- fiable factors that are the constraints of production efficiency, healthcare leaders are in a better position to be responsible stewards of limited resources. Although this study focused on the scale and technical efficiencies of emer- gency departments, one can easily see how data envelopment analysis could be applied to other hospital-based ser- vice lines. Input- or output-oriented data envelopment analysis models can help hospitals monitor performances of decision-making units against the best performing unit and determine the main source of the technical inef- ficiency. Pairing this information with existing service line specific KPIs, data envelopment analysis could provide hospital executives more certainty that an investment in resources is what is needed to improve overall system ef- ficiency and generate positive returns. CONTACT: Hyojung Kang; hkang@virginia.edu; (434) 297-6313; research assistant professor, University of Virginia, 151 Engineer's Way, Char- lottesville, VA 22911 Jia ju Ja ) Shi is the Caroly . Stewart Chair a d Professor i he H. Milto tewart School of I dustrial a d Systems E gi eer- i g at the Georgia I stitute of Tech ology. He is editor-i -chief of IISE Transactions, a academicia of the I ter atio al Academy for Quality a d a fellow of IISE, ASME a d INFORMS. Teresa Wu is a dustrial e gi eeri g pro- fessor i rizo a State U iversity's School of Computi g, I formatics a Decisi Systems E gi eeri g. She is editor-i -chief of IISE Transactions on Healthcare Sys- tems Engineering.