Physician Discretion and Patient Pick-up: How Familiarity Encourages Multitasking in the Emergency Department

Patient demand for emergency medical services continues to rise from all-time highs. Physicians generally respond to the rising demand by increasing the level of multitasking. What leads emergency department (ED) physicians to select which patients, and how many patients, to treat? Queuing models frequently assume individual servers operate independently of other servers. In contrast, we consider how familiarity between peer physicians affects patient selection and the chosen multitasking level, a process more commonly known in the ED as “patient pick-up.” Using observations from two EDs, we explore whether familiarity alters patient pick-up behavior, we determine the effect of familiarity on multitasking, and we measure the combined impact of familiarity and multitasking on other ED outcomes. Among ED physicians, greater average familiarity leads to an increase in patient pick-up rate, observed multitasking, and shorter patient wait time, with no identifiable negative impact to patient processing time or length of stay. Moreover, the effects intensify at the end of a physician’s shift and for patients in severe condition. Within more familiar groups, physicians appear willing to exert more effort. Our study clarifies how the benefits materialize and illustrates why researchers must consider server familiarity moving forward.