ArticleThe Medical journal of Australia2026
Strategies for Reducing Access Block and Waiting Time for Patients Seeking Emergency Hospital Care: Results of a Ward-Level Discrete Event Simulation at Queensland's Largest Public Hospitals.
Article in The Medical journal of Australia, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Embedded Low-Acuity Pathway in the Emergency Department: An Alternative to Stand-Alone Urgent Care Services.Emergency medicine Australasia : EMA · 2026Article
- The Impact of Hospital Bed Occupancy on Patient Flow and Emergency Department Access: A 25-Hospital Cohort Study.The Medical journal of Australia · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveTo assess the impact of strategies to improve public hospital emergency access using a detailed ward-level simulation modelling approach. DESIGN AND
settingDiscrete event simulation was used to simulate patient flow at three principal referral Australian hospitals from 1 September 2021 to 31 August 2022. Models were developed and validated using every emergency department (ED) presentation, inpatient episode of care and patient ward movement at the study hospitals.
main outcome measuresMean and total ED length of stay, mean waiting time, access block rate, 4-h rule compliance and bed utilisation for patients admitted from the ED.
resultsReducing ED demand via arrangements that accommodate the same proportion and types of admissions from the ED as the existing ED presenting population reduces access block, with larger impacts in winter than in summer. However, reducing 'general practitioner-type patients' in EDs has negligible impact on access block. Tangible impacts on improving patient flow can be achieved by removing maintenance care patients from hospitals (reducing the percentage of access block by up to a third) and reducing elective admissions. Strategies that emphasised morning, midday and early afternoon discharges led to large flow improvements. The strategy already practised by most hospitals of sharing patients among wards greatly improves emergency access, and gains are the same order of magnitude as reducing overall ED demand.
conclusionsThe study provides support to policymakers looking for evidence regarding strategies to improve emergency access to public hospital care.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.