A Simplified Analysis to Determine the Impact of Surgical Procedure Time on Pediatric Anesthesia Productivity

Abstract

With fee-for-service (FFS) reimbursement, anesthesiologists benefit financially from cases that take longer than expected. Capitation, or fixed anesthesia reimbursement (FAR), might result in financial losses for such inefficient cases. In this investigation, we used the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' average anesthesia times as benchmarks for efficiency and examined case time characteristics for three surgical services: otorhinolaryngology, general surgery, and orthopedics. Our model demonstrated that some inefficient cases would be better billed FAR rather than FFS.

Optimizing patient flow in a large hospital surgical centre by means of discrete‐event computer simulation models

“…In conclusion, it can be said that a computer simulation based on discrete events allowed for the suggestion of a simple and feasible organizational change (in the type of surgical room scheduling) that would introduce significant gains in the system performance. Other methodologies could have been used to this end [15–17], but the simulation tool could provide valuable insights into the functioning of the analysed hospital system, as indicated by the fact that some of the presented simulations did not yield the ‘obvious’ (expected) consequences. For instance, no productivity gains could be detected when the number of PABs was increased without concurrent changes in the type of room scheduling.…”