Timeliness of Care

Timeliness of care is defined by the National Academy of Medicine as “reducing waits and sometimes harmful delays for both those who receive and those who give care”. Whether the lack of timeliness occurs in the evaluation or the treatment phase of health care, either can lead to adverse outcomes. Delays in care can further be contextualized into delays of emergent, urgent, acute, subacute, and chronic care with timeliness measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years, depending on the urgency of the medical condition (Table. The Spectrum of Timeliness). The first step to timely care is access to health care. Once health care is accessed, health care providers and the systems they work in need to evaluate and treat their patients in a timely fashion. In this chapter, we look at issues revolving around the timely access to health care in both the acute and chronic care settings. We then examine the effect of timely care on patients, providers, and the health care system. Finally, we look at best practices in timely care as well as consider future directions.