Applying Performance Frontiers in Operating Room Management: A Tutorial Using Data From an Academic Medical Center

Although the primary goal of operating room (OR) management is to minimize inefficiencies, it may be difficult for OR managers to track metrics when one extrapolates possible scenarios across every OR on a daily basis. With the ability to visualize the statistical relationships to help simplify the analysis of large datasets, a more elaborate efficiency framework can be established using Pareto optimality (or performance frontiers), a multicriteria framework that includes variables that serve as proxies for a variety of outcomes. Applied to OR management, performance frontiers allow for the evaluation of common and well-understood issues of under- and over-utilized time.