Prioritization strategies for patient evacuations.

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Management
• Operations Research
• Emergency Preparedness

Background:

• Evacuating healthcare facilities is a last resort, typically assuming all patients are moved.
• Existing literature reveals no consensus on prioritizing critical versus non-critical care patients during evacuations.
• Current evacuation policies are often
• greedy,
• prioritizing one patient group entirely before considering another.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a dynamic programming model for optimizing emergency patient evacuations.
• To challenge the optimality of
• greedy,
• all-or-nothing
• evacuation policies.
• To provide insights into optimal prioritization strategies for unit- or floor-level evacuations.

Main Methods:

• Literature review of existing evacuation prioritization strategies.
• Development of a dynamic programming model for patient evacuation.
• Analysis of the model's output to compare with traditional
• greedy
• policies.

Main Results:

• Demonstration that
• greedy,
• all-or-nothing
• evacuation policies are not consistently optimal.
• Identification of potential inefficiencies in current standard evacuation planning.
• Insights into dynamic, optimized patient prioritization for emergency evacuations.

Conclusions:

• A dynamic programming approach offers a more optimal strategy for healthcare facility evacuations than traditional
• greedy
• methods.
• Rethinking patient prioritization can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of emergency evacuations.
• The proposed model provides a framework for developing better evacuation plans at the unit or floor level.