A new study undertaken by J. E. Bardram and T. R. Hansen using Cetrea Business Intelligence™has shown that only half of all operations in the OP are planned operations and only 18% of the operations scheduled in the morning are performed as planned. The study was carried out over 133 days in a 5 months period and the result were:

 

  • Only 56% of all operations were planned on before-hand.
  • The remaining 44% were acute and had to be fitted into the operating schedule.
  • 8% of all operations were cancelled.
  • 31% of all operations were modified in time (prolonged/delayed/moved) exceeding 30 minutes.
  • 67% of all planned operations were changed in one way or another.
Overall this study shows that only 18% of an operating schedule as it is presented in the morning is performed as planned. The conclusion is that it is impossible to make "optimal" operating schedules through planning and booking, because only half of the operations are know on before-hand. Therefore, it is essential to have systems that support continuous adjustments and coordination to handle the flow of both incoming acute operations and the planned operations.
The study has been published and presented at the scientific conference 2010 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Work in Savannah, Georgia, USA:
  • JE Bardram and TR Hansen. Why the plan doesn’t hold – a study of situated planning, articulation and coordination work in a surgical ward. In Proceedings of the 2010 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2010. Savannah, GA, USA. ACM Press. (online)