Abstract
Background
First-case tardiness is still a common source of frustration. In this study, a nationwide
operating room (OR) Benchmark database was used to assess the effectiveness of interventions
implemented to reduce tardiness and calculate its economic impact.
Methods
Data from 8 University Medical Centers over 7 years were included: 190,295 elective
inpatient first cases. Data were analyzed with SPSS statistics and multidisciplinary
focus-group study meetings. Analysis of variance with contrast analysis measured the
influence of interventions.
Results
Seven thousand ninety-four hours were lost annually to first-case tardiness, which
has a considerable economic impact. Four University Medical Centers implemented interventions
and effectuated a significant reduction in tardiness, eg providing feedbacks directly
when ORs started too late, new agreements between OR and intensive care unit departments
concerning “intensive care unit bed release” policy, and a shift in responsibilities
regarding transport of patients to the OR.
Conclusions
Nationwide benchmarking can be applied to identify and measure the effectiveness of
interventions to reduce first-case tardiness in a university hospital OR environment.
The implemented interventions in 4 centers were successful in significantly reducing
first-case tardiness.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: January 06, 2014
Received in revised form:
September 20,
2013
Received:
March 25,
2013
Footnotes
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Identification
Copyright
© 2014 Elsevier Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
