Implications of patient age, ASA status on OR management decisions

Editor's Note

Evaluation of patient age and American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) physical status as variables can help OR managers better predict turnaround times, which can facilitate scheduling, this study finds.

Researchers developed models of turnaround times of 13, 632 OR procedures with respect to multiple variables including surgical schedule, age, ASA physical status, duration of procedures, and duration of preceding procedures.

Using the best models, they achieved an increase in predictive accuracy of 7.7%, relative to age/ASA-independent medians of turnaround times.

The researchers used the models to construct a management decision table to estimate age/ASA-dependent turnaround time for OR scheduling at their hospital.

BACKGROUND: In elderly, high-risk patients, operating room (OR) turnaround times are especially difficult to estimate, and the managerial implications of patient age and ASA physical status for OR management decisions remain unclear. We hypothesized that evaluating patient age and ASA physical status in the right model would improve accuracy of turnaround time estimates and, thus, would have decisive implications for OR management.