Waiting time
Hospital Operations
Definition. Waiting time is the interval between the point at which a patient needs or requests care and the point at which care is received.
Explanation
Waiting times are a key indicator of access and responsiveness. In geriatric hip fracture, longer in-hospital waiting time to surgery is associated with worse functional outcomes, a relationship that requires careful causal analysis with directed acyclic graphs (Cai et al., 2023).
Queueing theory, scheduling and capacity planning are the main tools for reducing waits.
Related concepts
Access to care Appointment scheduling Patient flow Directed acyclic graph (DAG)
Read on The Health Topics
References
Cai, Q., Fu, K., Jia, W., Li, X., He, H., Yao, Z., Chen, X., Dong, Y., Wang, Q., Kang, B., Qian, B., Chen, S., & Zhang, C. (2023). In-hospital waiting time to surgery and functional outcomes in geriatric hip fractures: A directed acyclic graph-based preplanned analysis from a prospective multicenter cohort study. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL of SURGERY, 109.0 (6), 1612–1619. https://doi.org/10.1097/JS9.0000000000000385
Cite this entry: Kurutkan, M. N. (2026). Waiting time. In The Health Topics glossary. https://healthtopic.org/glossary/waiting-time/