Institute of Medical Informatics, University of Münster, Domagkstraße 9, 48149 Münster, Germany.
BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2011 May 24;11:34. doi: 10.1186/1472-6947-11-34.
Assessing turnaround times can help to analyse workflows in hospital information systems. This paper presents a systematic review of literature concerning different turnaround time definitions. Our objectives were to collect relevant literature with respect to this kind of process times in hospitals and their respective domains. We then analysed the existing definitions and summarised them in an appropriate format.
Our search strategy was based on Pubmed queries and manual reviews of the bibliographies of retrieved articles. Studies were included if precise definitions of turnaround times were available. A generic timeline was designed through a consensus process to provide an overview of these definitions.
More than 1000 articles were analysed and resulted in 122 papers. Of those, 162 turnaround time definitions in different clinical domains were identified. Starting and end points vary between these domains. To illustrate those turnaround time definitions, a generic timeline was constructed using preferred terms derived from the identified definitions. The consensus process resulted in the following 15 terms: admission, order, biopsy/examination, receipt of specimen in laboratory, procedure completion, interpretation, dictation, transcription, verification, report available, delivery, physician views report, treatment, discharge and discharge letter sent. Based on this analysis, several standard terms for turnaround time definitions are proposed.
Using turnaround times to benchmark clinical workflows is still difficult, because even within the same clinical domain many different definitions exist. Mapping of turnaround time definitions to a generic timeline is feasible.
评估周转时间有助于分析医院信息系统中的工作流程。本文对有关医院内不同周转时间定义的文献进行了系统回顾。我们的目标是收集有关医院内这种流程时间及其各自领域的相关文献。然后，我们分析了现有的定义，并以适当的格式进行了总结。
我们的搜索策略基于 Pubmed 查询和检索文章的参考文献的手动审查。如果有明确的周转时间定义，则纳入研究。通过共识过程设计了一个通用时间表，以概述这些定义。
分析了 1000 多篇文章，得到了 122 篇论文。其中，确定了 162 个不同临床领域的周转时间定义。这些领域的起点和终点各不相同。为了说明这些周转时间的定义，使用从确定的定义中派生的首选术语构建了一个通用时间表。共识过程产生了以下 15 个术语：入院、医嘱、活检/检查、标本送达实验室、完成操作、解释、口述、转录、验证、报告可用、交付、医生查看报告、治疗、出院和出院信发送。基于此分析，提出了一些周转时间定义的标准术语。
使用周转时间来基准临床工作流程仍然很困难，因为即使在同一临床领域内，也存在许多不同的定义。将周转时间定义映射到通用时间表是可行的。
