Case study of the prediction of elective surgery durations in a New Zealand teaching hospital

Kian Wee Soh, Cameron Walker, Michael O'Sullivan, Jonathan Wallace and David Grayson

International Journal of Health Planning and Management, 2020, vol. 35, issue 6, 1593-1605

Abstract: We present an elective surgery redesign project involving several New Zealand hospitals that is primarily data‐driven. One of the project objectives is to improve the predictions of surgery durations. We address this task by considering two approaches: (a) linear regression modelling, and (b) improvement of the data quality. For (a) we evaluate the accuracy of predictions using two performance measures. These predictions are compared to the surgeons' estimates that may subsequently be adjusted. We demonstrate using the historical surgical lists that the estimates from our prediction techniques improve the scheduling of elective surgeries by minimising the occurrences of list under‐ and over‐runs. For (b), we discuss how the surgical data motivates a review of the surgery procedure classification which takes into account the design of the electronic booking form. The proposed hierarchical classification streamlines the specification of surgery types and therefore retains the potential for improved predictions.

Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/hpm.3046

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ijhplm:v:35:y:2020:i:6:p:1593-1605

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0749-6753

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Health Planning and Management is currently edited by Calum Paton

More articles in International Journal of Health Planning and Management from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().