Related Experiment Videos
The measurement of complexity in surgical pathology
J E Tomaszewski1, S Abraham, K Bell
1Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, Philadelphia 19104-4283, USA.
Insights
Quantifying surgical pathology laboratory effort requires more than case numbers. Case complexity, measured by slides and data lines, strongly correlates with actual work time for diagnosis.
Area of Science:
- Pathology
- Laboratory Medicine
- Healthcare Administration
Background:
- Accurate quantitation of surgical pathology laboratory effort is increasingly demanded by healthcare stakeholders.
- Simple case volume metrics do not sufficiently represent laboratory workload or complexity.
- Existing methods for measuring surgical pathology case complexity are inadequate.
Purpose of the Study:
- To identify reliable metrics for quantifying surgical pathology laboratory workload.
- To correlate extractable report features with the time required for case sign-out.
- To develop a model for estimating work time based on case report data.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of extractable features from surgical pathology reports.
- Correlation of these features with the time spent on case review and sign-out.
- Investigated metrics such as the number of slides and lines of factual data.
Main Results:
- The number of slides reviewed was a strong correlate of case sign-out time.
- Total lines of factual data in reports also strongly correlated with work time.
- These findings suggest that case complexity can be quantified using report data.
Conclusions:
- Workload in surgical pathology can be more accurately measured by incorporating case complexity.
- Metrics like slide count and data volume can predict the time required for diagnosis.
- Models based on report data can provide a more realistic estimation of laboratory work time.
Abstract:
The quantitation of effort both within and among surgical pathology laboratories is data which is being increasingly sought by physician managers, hospital administrators and managed care organizations. Simple measurement of case numbers fails to adequately represent the work of a laboratory. The complexity of the cases reviewed is likely to explain a significant portion of the variance in the time required to bring a case to final diagnosis. Measures which adequately reflect complexity in surgical pathology cases have not been developed. We have studied a variety of extractable report features and correlated these with the time required for case sign-out. Numbers of slides reviewed and total lines of factual data provided were strong correlates of the time required to complete case review, report construction and verification. Such data suggests that models can be constructed based on data that can be gleaned from case reports and records which will relate such data to actual work time.