American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons' Anesthesia and Third Molar Extraction Benchmark Study:...

Area of Science:

• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Health Services Research
• Quality Improvement

Background:

• Benchmark statistics are crucial for quality assurance and improvement in healthcare.
• Establishing specialty-specific benchmarks requires robust data collection methods.
• Practice-based research collaboratives (P-BRCs) offer a framework for gathering such data.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review the rationale for a new specialty-specific benchmark study in oral and maxillofacial surgery.
• To summarize methods for creating a P-BRC for collecting benchmark data.
• To describe the characteristics of surgeon participants within the P-BRC.

Main Methods:

• A prospective cohort study design was employed.
• A P-BRC was established with randomly selected American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (AAOMS) members.
• Data on patient anesthesia and third molar (M3) surgery were collected from enrolled surgeons.

Main Results:

• 642 surgeons were invited, with 124 active participants forming the P-BRC.
• The P-BRC collected data on 6,344 anesthesia cases and 9,207 M3 removals.
• Active P-BRC participants were younger and more likely to be board-certified than inactive ones.

Conclusions:

• The study did not achieve the goal of a random sample of 300 AAOMS members for the P-BRC.
• The current P-BRC sample is self-selected and well-characterized, suitable for estimating variables with high or low frequencies.
• Future reports will detail anesthesia and M3-specific variables collected by the P-BRC.