Impacts of Care Provider Collaborations on the Service Time for Inpatient Stays: An Analysis Using Electronic Health Record Audit Logs and Dynamic Graphs.

This article investigates the impact of real-time collaboration among care providers on inpatient length of stay (LOS) using electronic health record (EHR) audit logs from a large U.S. teaching hospital. Collaboration is defined as temporally proximate coaccesses of patient records during an inpatient stay, distinct from team familiarity, which reflects accumulated prior experience. The study employs a temporal data-mining algorithm to construct dynamic collaboration networks and finds a nonlinear, inverted U-shaped relationship between collaboration strength and LOS: weak initial collaboration increases LOS, but after approximately two to four prior interactions (the tipping point), stronger collaboration reduces LOS. Additionally, high variability in collaboration strength among providers correlates with longer LOS, suggesting that consistent collaboration across all team members enhances efficiency. These findings highlight the operational importance of fostering strong, uniform collaboration patterns to improve inpatient service efficiency and potentially reduce readmission rates.