Effects of a Surgical Receipt Program on the Supply Costs of Five General Surgery Procedures

Surgical supplies occupy a large portion of health care expenditures but is often under the surgeon's control. We sought to assess whether an automated, surgeon-directed, cost feedback system can decrease supply expenditures for five common general surgery procedures.

An automated "surgical receipt" detailing intraoperative supply costs was generated and emailed to surgeons after each case. We compared the median cost per case for 18 mo before and after implementation of the surgical receipt. We controlled for price fluctuations by applying common per-unit prices in both periods. We also compared the incision time, case length booking accuracy, length of stay, and postoperative occurrences.

Median costs decreased significantly for open inguinal hernia ($433.45 to $385.49, P < 0.001), laparoscopic cholecystectomy ($886.77 to $816.13, P = 0.002), and thyroidectomy ($861.21 to $825.90, P = 0.034). Median costs were unchanged for laparoscopic appendectomy and increased significantly for lumpectomy ($325.67 to $420.53, P < 0.001). There was an increase in incision-to-closure minutes for open inguinal hernia (71 to 75 min, P < 0.001) and laparoscopic cholecystectomy (75 to 96 min, P < 0.001), but a decrease in thyroidectomy (79 to 73 min, P < 0.001). There was an increase in booking accuracy for laparoscopic appendectomy (38.6% to 55.0%, P = 0.001) and thyroidectomy (32.5% to 48.1%, P = 0.001). There were no differences in postoperative occurrence rates and length of stay duration.

An automated surgeon-directed surgical receipt may be a useful tool to decrease supply costs for certain procedures. However, curtailing surgical supply costs with surgeon-directed cost feedback alone is challenging and a multimodal approach may be necessary.