Syracuse professor to speak in CBE seminar May 15

The Center for Operations Research and Management Science in the College of Business and Economics at Western Washington University is holding its first research seminar of spring quarter May 15.

Fred Easton, from Syracuse University, will present "Mediating Tardy Medications with Staggered Schedules and Swarm Staffing" from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Friday, May 15, in Parks Hall 441.

Easton earned his Ph.D. in Operations Management from the University of Washington in 1985 and currently heads the Robert H. Brethen Operations Management Institute at Syracuse University. His research focuses on capacity and demand management issues in both service and manufacturing organizations and is often oriented toward issues found in the health services, auto manufacturing, emergency services, and light manufacturing industries. Prior to embarking on an academic career, Professor Easton was an executive with an energy utility.

Abstract: Each year over 800,000 adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are admitted to U.S. hospitals. Because low oxygen affects most organ systems, they could be treated for any of several different illnesses. However, that treatment typically involves inhaled medications administered three or four times per day according to a common, hospital-wide medication schedule. Administered by a respiratory care practitioner (RCP) assigned to the unit where the patient is located, each treatment takes about 20 minutes. Unfortunately, lengthy administration times and common medication schedules interact to create significant workload peaks for RCPs, causing a large fraction of the scheduled medications to be administered late. This contributes to lengthier hospital stays and other undesirable outcomes.

RCP workload peaks can be attenuated by assigning different scheduled medication times to each care unit. However, this strategy does little to improve on-time performance if individual RCPs only treat the patients in one or two care units. We propose un-tethering RCPs from their traditional unit assignments, allowing them to move together as a team from care unit to care unit administering inhaled medications. Combined with staggered medication schedules, this “swarm” strategy can dramatically reduce late medication errors. Perhaps more importantly, swarm staffing enables a primary care relationship between RCPs and their chronic patients; a key element of an effective chronic care model. This research characterizes the late medication problem, presents stochastic models to select and assess alternative staggered medication schedules, and reports the experience of one hospital that adopted this strategy.