Title: Reducing non-operative time: methods and impact on operating room economics

Authors: Dan C. Krupka, Shashikant Sathaye, Warren S. Sandberg

Addresses: Twin Peaks Group, Lexington, MA, 02421, USA. ' Twin Peaks Group, Lexington, MA, 02421, USA. ' Department of Anaesthesia and Critical Care, Massachusetts General Hospital, 55 Fruit Street, Clinics 3, Boston, MA, 02114, USA

Abstract: Improving operating room throughput is a perennial objective, but only incremental gains have been reported in the past. Recently, however, in situations characterised by short operative times, several teams have reported substantial increases in throughput, by addressing non-operative time rather than just its component, turnover time. The methods employed fall into five categories. Reviewing published results, we deduce the potential impact of each category on the reduction of non-operative time. Next, we estimate the reduction in non-operative time that must be achieved reliably to add cases to a |full| operating room schedule, given a variety of operative times. Finally, we calculate potential incremental margin contributions of several of the reviewed perioperative systems, when implemented in a typical US hospital. We conclude that the benefits of introducing the methods outweigh their costs, but caution that hospitals need to increase their caseload of short procedures to realise these benefits.

Keywords: cost savings; healthcare process effectiveness; healthcare process redesign; hospital revenue; non-operative time; operating room efficiency; operating room throughput; opportunity cost; operating room economics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHTM.2008.019672

International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management, 2008 Vol.9 No.4, pp.325 - 352

Published online: 19 Jul 2008 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article