Event-based knowledge elicitation of operating room management decision-making using scenarios adapted from...

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Management
• Anesthesiology
• Operations Research

Background:

• No systematic process existed for assessing operating room (OR) management decisions impacting efficiency.
• Evaluated event-based knowledge elicitation for rapid assessment of OR decision-making.
• Investigated automatic scenario adaptation from information systems data.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a practical, systematic process for needs assessment in OR management.
• To identify suboptimal OR management decisions that decrease the efficiency of OR time utilization.
• To assess the feasibility of automatically adapting scenarios using facility data.

Main Methods:

• Developed event-based knowledge elicitation to assess OR management decisions affecting efficiency.
• Created hypothetical scenarios from published examples, adapted automatically using facility information systems or anesthesia information management system (AIMS) data.
• Managers spent ~1 hour assessing their decisions against scenarios; automated indexing facilitated case-based reasoning.

Main Results:

• Scenarios were adapted and utilized in 22 hospitals.
• Few decision changes were required to enhance OR efficiency.
• Heterogeneous results highlighted the value of individualized, facility-specific assessments.

Conclusions:

• Automated event-based knowledge elicitation is a technical advance for identifying suboptimal OR management decisions.
• The adapted scenarios provide a practical tool for improving OR efficiency and future decision-making.