Batch 01 · ER triage
Pediatric surge masked by aggregate volume
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System failure identification
Pediatric arrivals spike while total department volume stays flat. Adult volume has fallen by an offsetting amount, so no aggregate figure moves and no pediatric-capable staff are called in. The department is busy in a way its own reporting describes as ordinary.
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Data pipeline diagnostics
Census is reported as a single total. Aggregating across populations that need different staff, equipment, and space treats substitutable and non-substitutable capacity as though they were the same resource. Summation implicitly asserts that any bed can serve any patient.
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Predictive computational model
Disaggregate arrival forecasts by population and compare each against the capacity that can actually serve it. A pediatric-specific ratio moves when the aggregate does not. Forecasts per population are no harder to produce than the combined one.
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Workflow integration
Fold the disaggregated ratios into the existing capacity view as separate rows. No new screen and no new alert: the change is that the table stops summing across incompatible resources. The correction is to the arithmetic, not to anyone's workflow.