[Utilization of a unit of ambulatory surgery]

The productivity in an operating theatre can be defined as surgical time divided by the total work hours of the operating room staff. This productivity factor is normally reduced in the case of operations that take only a short time to perform, since the time interval between operations is usually not reduced correspondingly. In the unit for outpatient surgery at Akershus Central Hospital, 4.6 operations were performed daily in 206 days in 1993, with a productivity factor of 42% and an operating theatre utilization of 66% (operating theatre time spent on specific patients/total operating theatre time). The mean interval from the time the surgeons finished one operation until they could start the next was 33 minutes (confidence interval 32-34), with a mean operating time of 44 minutes (42-46). The productivity seemed good compared with the central operating theatre suite at the same hospital, and with US standard.