MONITORING THE EFFICIENCY OF USE OF OPERATING ROOM TIME WITH CUSUM CHARTS

Health care organizations often need to assess operating room (OR) performance in order to measure the efficiency. In practice, to estimate surgery durations hospitals use various estimating systems either based on surgeon's estimate and/or software. Accurate estimates are vital for high quality OR performance and efficiency. Thus, surgeons' estimates are significant inputs for effective OR suite schedule in surgeon based systems. To achieve a successful OR management, not only utilization performance measurement but also monitoring it is crucial. Control charts could be constructed for monitoring the OR efficiency. Monitoring the efficiency of use of OR time might include monitoring operative and/or non-operative times. In this study, cumulative sum (CUSUM) charts are introduced for the performance of surgery time estimations. An example involving surgical times is also provided to support our discussion. Some scenarios are defined and surgeons' estimation errors are simulated for illustrative purposes.