Title: A statistical approach to estimating elective surgery duration

Authors: Ruba Alamad; Shengyong Wang; Chen Ling

Addresses: Industrial Engineering Department, Al Hussein Technical University, Jordan ' The University of Akron, Akron, OH, USA ' The University of Akron, Akron, OH, USA

Abstract: As the primary source of cost and revenue centre in hospitals in the USA, the surgery department plays a critical role in the healthcare delivery process. Overestimating and underestimating surgery duration is a common issue faced by the operating room (OR). In this study, we aimed to improve the accuracy of surgery duration estimation to increase hospital revenue, avoid extra costs, and improve both surgeon and patient satisfaction. We analysed data from five different surgery types that account for about 80% of the total surgery volume, including general surgery, genitourinary surgery, orthopaedic surgery, peripheral vascular surgery and gynaecological surgery. A robust multiple regression analysis was conducted to identify the key factors significantly affecting the duration of the surgery, such as the primary procedure code (CPT), surgeon, other procedure codes, anaesthesia type, time of the day and patient characteristics. The significant levels of these factors and their impacts on the surgery duration estimation varied for different surgery types. Our approach, underpinned by the use of regression analysis, improved the prediction accuracy of the surgery durations by 43.8% compared with the current estimation approach.

Keywords: regression; estimation; overutilisation; underutilisation; statistical analysis; surgery duration.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEH.2026.156187

International Journal of Electronic Healthcare, 2026 Vol.14 No.3, pp.280 - 292

Received: 24 Oct 2024
Accepted: 17 Oct 2025
Published online: 07 Sep 2026 *

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