Hospital turnaround time

Hospital turnaround time is an EMS interval associated with completing work at a receiving facility. The phrase needs explicit endpoints: a report may measure arrival to patient handoff, arrival to unit availability, or another defined span. Those intervals describe different parts of the encounter and should not share an unexplained label.

Separate the handoff from later readiness

Patient arrival, transfer of care, and a unit becoming available are distinct milestones. A measure that ends at transfer of care answers a different question from one that continues until the ambulance is available for another response.

The NASEMSO Data Managers Council's interval definitions separately identify arrival-to-transfer, arrival-to-back-in-service, and transfer-to-back-in-service intervals. This provides a clear way to describe the timeline without relying on the word “turnaround” alone. EMS time-interval definitions.

Example

Hypothetical: An ambulance reaches a hospital at 13:00. Patient care transfers at 13:18, and the unit is available at 13:30. Arrival to handoff is 18 minutes. Arrival to availability is 30 minutes, with 12 minutes between handoff and availability.

Calling all 30 minutes “offload delay” would assume that the post-handoff interval belonged to the offload process. The record does not support that assumption. The report should preserve the distinct stages and use a separately defined rule if it identifies delay.

Common confusion

Turnaround time is not the patient's total hospital stay or the time until a medical diagnosis. It concerns the EMS encounter at the receiving facility under the chosen definition.

It is also different from the drive back to a station. Depending on local rules, a unit may become available before reaching its home location. A report ending at home return measures a wider interval than one ending at availability.

Reporting the measure

Name the eligible transports and facilities. State whether the result includes emergency scene transports, transfers between facilities, or other groups, and how missing endpoints are handled.

Use the same endpoints when comparing hospitals or periods. Include the number of eligible records and identify the statistic, such as median or 90th percentile. A single average can conceal variation, and a change in the mix of transports can affect the summary. The timing data alone do not establish the cause of a longer interval.

Related terms

• Ambulance offload delay
• Unit available time
• EMS transport
• On-scene time

Sources

• NASEMSO Data Managers Council: EMS Time Interval Definitions — Distinguishes destination arrival, transfer of care, and back-in-service intervals using NEMSIS version 3.5 fields.