Cost Effectiveness Analysis of an Orthopedic/Podiatry Minor Procedure Room.

摘要

National health care reform has fostered a focus on the issues of cost and access. While there continues to be a lot of talk on the issue of access, the foremost attention has been placed on the financing of health care delivery. Efforts to reduce the cost of health care have had a profound impact on surgical practice and specifically on the utilization of services and changing practice patterns. One practice in which alternative methods should be explored is the performance of minor procedures. At Landstuhl Regional Medical Center (LRMC), minor surgical procedures requiring local anesthetics are being done in the main operating room (OR) due to inadequate minor procedure space in an alternative area. This practice leads to higher costs per case. This cost effective analysis showed that be renovating the minor procedure room in the Orthopedic Clinic, positive benefits will be noted to patient time, physician time and a decrease in the current backlog of surgical procedures. This improvement in the process, for those patients that require minor procedures, will be a more efficient use of the available resources to include patient, OR and physician time.