Abstract
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.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 122-8 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | American Journal of Surgery |
| Volume | 211 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jan 2016 |
Keywords
- Academic Medical Centers
- Appointments and Schedules
- Clinical Trial
- Efficiency, Organizational
- Emergencies
- Emergency Service, Hospital
- Humans
- Journal Article
- Netherlands
- Operating Rooms
- Organizational Policy
- Process Assessment (Health Care)
- Prospective Studies
- Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
- Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
- Surgical Procedures, Operative
- Workload