Utility function-based patient prioritisation in the emergency department

With the increased awareness of productivity problems in healthcare operations, many researchers have proposed the implementation of tools and methods developed in other fields to benefit healthcare delivery. Accordingly, we present in this paper an exploratory work using a hypothetical example of a decision-making methodology, the multi-attribute utility analysis, to healthcare. The hypothetical sample problem presented involves patient prioritisation in an Emergency Department (ED), where several patients require immediate attention and they all have the same acuity level. Utility theory is selected for this application to appropriately account for the uncertainty in the decision problem. [Submitted 01 March 2008; Revised 05 September 2008; Revised 02 February 2009; Accepted 07 February 2009]