TY - JOUR
T1 - Dedicated operating room for emergency surgery generates more utilization, less overtime, and less cancellations
AU - van Veen-Berkx, Elizabeth
AU - Elkhuizen, Sylvia G
AU - Kuijper, Bart
AU - Kazemier, Geert
AU - Dutch Operating Room Benchmarking Collaborative
N1 - Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
PY - 2016/1
Y1 - 2016/1
N2 - BACKGROUND: Two approaches prevail for reserving operating room (OR) capacity for emergency surgery: (1) dedicated emergency ORs and (2) evenly allocating capacity to all elective ORs, thereby creating a virtual emergency team. Previous studies contradict which approach leads to the best performance in OR utilization.METHODS: Quasi-experimental controlled time-series design with empirical data from 3 university medical centers. Four different time periods were compared with analysis of variance with contrasts.RESULTS: Performance was measured based on 467,522 surgical cases. After closing the dedicated emergency OR, utilization slightly increased; overtime also increased. This was in contrast to earlier simulated results. The 2 control centers, maintaining a dedicated emergency OR, showed a higher increase in utilization and a decrease in overtime, along with a smaller ratio of case cancellations because of emergency surgery.CONCLUSION: This study shows that in daily practice a dedicated emergency OR is the preferred approach in performance terms regarding utilization, overtime, and case cancellations.
AB - BACKGROUND: Two approaches prevail for reserving operating room (OR) capacity for emergency surgery: (1) dedicated emergency ORs and (2) evenly allocating capacity to all elective ORs, thereby creating a virtual emergency team. Previous studies contradict which approach leads to the best performance in OR utilization.METHODS: Quasi-experimental controlled time-series design with empirical data from 3 university medical centers. Four different time periods were compared with analysis of variance with contrasts.RESULTS: Performance was measured based on 467,522 surgical cases. After closing the dedicated emergency OR, utilization slightly increased; overtime also increased. This was in contrast to earlier simulated results. The 2 control centers, maintaining a dedicated emergency OR, showed a higher increase in utilization and a decrease in overtime, along with a smaller ratio of case cancellations because of emergency surgery.CONCLUSION: This study shows that in daily practice a dedicated emergency OR is the preferred approach in performance terms regarding utilization, overtime, and case cancellations.
KW - Academic Medical Centers
KW - Appointments and Schedules
KW - Efficiency, Organizational
KW - Emergencies
KW - Emergency Service, Hospital
KW - Humans
KW - Netherlands
KW - Operating Rooms
KW - Organizational Policy
KW - Process Assessment (Health Care)
KW - Prospective Studies
KW - Surgical Procedures, Operative
KW - Workload
KW - Clinical Trial
KW - Journal Article
KW - Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
KW - Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
U2 - 10.1016/j.amjsurg.2015.06.021
DO - 10.1016/j.amjsurg.2015.06.021
M3 - Article
C2 - 26342842
VL - 211
SP - 122
EP - 128
JO - American Journal of Surgery
JF - American Journal of Surgery
SN - 0002-9610
IS - 1
ER -