Improving operating room efficiency by applying bin-packing and portfolio techniques to surgical case scheduling

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Management
• Operations Research
• Surgical Workflow Optimization

Background:

• An efficient operating room (OR) department sought further improvements.
• Investigated methods to enhance operational efficiency.

Purpose of the Study:

• To demonstrate efficiency gains through reduced organizational barriers and advanced mathematical techniques.
• To quantify improvements in OR utilization and freed OR blocks.

Main Methods:

• Applied advanced mathematical algorithms and scenario modeling for barrier relaxation.
• Utilized prospectively collected data from a university hospital's main inpatient OR department.
• Employed a block planning method for surgical case scheduling, with OR utilization as a key metric.

Main Results:

• Achieved a 4.5% point increase in OR utilization (95% CI: 4.0%-5.0%).
• This improvement was realized by reducing the total required OR time.
• Demonstrated a quantifiable impact of operational changes on resource efficiency.

Conclusions:

• Efficient OR departments can achieve further optimization.
• A significant cultural shift incorporating mathematical algorithms and barrier reduction enhances OR utilization.
• The study provides evidence for the effectiveness of data-driven and algorithmic approaches in surgical operations management.