Abstract: The disclosed embodiments disclose techniques for optimizing emergency department resource management. During operation, a system receives a set of parameters that is associated with a patient entering an emergency department. The system analyzes the set of parameters in a machine learning module to determine (1) a calculated acuity score that indicates an estimated severity of illness for the patient and (2) a set of workload predictions that predict a set of resources that will be needed to treat the patient in the emergency department. The system then uses the acuity score and the workload predictions to assign a set of predicted tasks that are associated with treating the patient into the work queues of the emergency department.