Practical Application of Research on Operating Room Efficiency and Utilization

摘要

Many advances have been made in operating room (OR) management during the past decade. Some of the most important practical results have been the elucidation of the mathematics for OR efficiency and the simulation of what it would take to actually allocate and schedule cases based on OR utilization. This work has revealed that, although many surgical facilities measure OR utilization, exceedingly few actually make operational decisions based on OR utilization. They do not because doing so would be impractical and economically irrational.What is being done in practice is to base decisions on OR efficiency.