How can the cost savings from reducing OR time and/or turnover times be calculated?
The impact of interventions on labor costs can be forecasted using each facilitys own data. Corresponding confidence intervals can also be calculated. For example, turnover times can be reduced between each case. Click here for a review article. Surgical times can be reduced to national average values for each procedure, as reported publicly for Medicare patients in the US. Click here for that article. The impact of new surgical procedures or anesthetic techniques can be modeled. For example, Oncura funded Dr. Dexter’s development of an Excel program to assist hospitals in evaluating cryosurgical ablation products. Click here for another example. Regardless of the intervention, the analysis proceeds as follows. First, the labor cost is calculated assuming that OR time is allocated and cases are scheduled based on OR efficiency. Click here for a lecture describing precisely what this means. Second, the intervention is performed, thereby reducing OR workload for each of the services (i.e
