What is artificial variability and how does it cause patient flow problems?
In any system, there are two kinds of variability. Natural variability, as the name suggests, is driven by natural variation, for example, across various clinical providers’ skill level. Artificial variability, on the other hand, is typically introduced extrinsically by management practices like scheduling. The result is substantial fluctuation in patient volume through a typical day, week, or month. Since a part of patient demand varies in a truly random fashion (e.g. most of the inflow through the ED), scheduling driven fluctuations result in further amplifying the variation. In the end, artificial variability in a hospital affects its ability to provide patients the right level of care, at the right place, at the right time.
