Productivity change of surgeons in an academic year

The goal of this study was to calculate total factor productivity of surgeons in an academic year and to evaluate the effect of surgical trainees on their productivity.

We analyzed all the surgical procedures performed from April 1 through September 30, 2013 in the Teikyo University Hospital. The nonradial and nonoriented Malmquist model under the variable returns-to-scale assumptions was employed. A decision-making unit is defined as a surgeon with the highest academic rank in the surgery. Inputs were defined as the number of physicians who assisted in surgery, and the time of surgical operation from skin incision to skin closure. The output was defined as the surgical fee for each surgery. April is the beginning month of a new academic year in Japan, and we divided the study period into April to June and July to September 2013. We computed each surgeon's Malmquist index, efficiency change, and technical change.

We analyzed 2789 surgical procedures that were performed by 105 surgeons. The Malmquist index of all surgeons was significantly greater than 1 (p = 0.0033). The technical change was significantly greater than 1 (p < 0.0001). However, the efficiency change was not statistically significantly different from 1 (p = 0.1817).

The surgeons are less productive in the beginning months of a new academic year. The main factor of this productivity loss is considered to be surgical training.