IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/tprsxx/v53y2015i24p7213-7225.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Managing nurse lines -- practical challenges and the developing theory

Author

Listed:
  • Xiaofang Wang
  • Laurens G. Debo
  • Alan Scheller-Wolf

Abstract

As a fast growing specialty, medical telephone triage lines (nurse lines) play an important role in providing advice and recommendations to help ensure that medical care is delivered at the appropriate level. In this paper, we discuss the operations of these nurse lines, based on studies in the literature and interviews with nurse line researchers and practitioners. This leads us to identify issues relevant for the design and management of such lines, challenges that operations research (OR)/operations management (OM) can help address. We demonstrate that a classical call center modelling approach, focusing exclusively on congestion, will be insufficient in addressing these challenges. Thus, we motivate research on an integrated framework in which both congestion and decision-making accuracy are coupled. We summarise the limited extant research in OR/OM that is applicable to the unique challenges posed by nurse lines, highlighting these models’ contributions, as well as the questions they leave unanswered. These questions provide significant opportunities for future research.

Suggested Citation

  • Xiaofang Wang & Laurens G. Debo & Alan Scheller-Wolf, 2015. "Managing nurse lines -- practical challenges and the developing theory," International Journal of Production Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(24), pages 7213-7225, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:tprsxx:v:53:y:2015:i:24:p:7213-7225
    DOI: 10.1080/00207543.2015.1005875
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00207543.2015.1005875
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00207543.2015.1005875?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Saghafian, Soroush & Hopp, Wallace J. & Iravani, Seyed M. R. & Cheng, Yao & Diermeier, Daniel, 2017. "Workload Management in Telemedical Physician Triage and Other Knowledge-Based Service Systems," Working Paper Series rwp17-035, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:tprsxx:v:53:y:2015:i:24:p:7213-7225. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/TPRS20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.