Monitoring changes in individual surgeon's workloads using anesthesia data

Franklin Dexter; Danielle Masursky; Johannes Ledolter; Ruth E Wachtel; Bettina Smallman

doi:10.1007/s12630-012-9693-9

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Monitoring changes in individual surgeon's workloads using anesthesia data

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

Monitoring changes in individual surgeon's workloads using anesthesia data

Franklin Dexter, Danielle Masursky, Johannes Ledolter, Ruth E Wachtel and Bettina Smallman

Canadian journal of anaesthesia = Journal canadien d'anesthesie, Vol.59(6), pp.571-577

06/2012

DOI: 10.1007/s12630-012-9693-9

PMID: 22431148

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Abstract

We investigated whether changes in the number of cases performed by surgeons can be used as an appropriate surrogate for anesthesia departments' billed units. We used both number of cases performed and the American Society of Anesthesiologists' Relative Value Guide™ (ASA RVG) units to assess all operating room anesthetics of an anesthesia group for two sets of 13 four-week periods. The units correspond to Canadian basic units and time units. Although the number of ASA RVG units is an economically important variable that quantifies perioperative workload, the number of cases is a suitable surrogate for ASA RVG units when used to monitor individual surgeons. The pooled mean Pearson correlation coefficient between the two variables was r = 0.95, with 95% confidence interval 0.94 to 0.96. In addition, there were essentially none to very weak pairwise correlations among surgeons. Informal hospital analyses of relative changes in a surgeon's caseload over one year using anesthesia workload data or anesthesia billing data will generally give equivalent results. The principal importance of our findings is that they can be used by anesthesiologists, specifically department heads, in their role as part of operating room committees. Such committees institute plans to revise the caseload of one or a few surgeons, and they then evaluate the results of those plans. The findings of this study are applicable to all anesthesia groups and may be especially valuable to the heads of anesthesiology departments who do not have the data to repeat our analyses.

Anesthesia - methods

Societies, Medical

Relative Value Scales

United States

Humans

General Surgery - economics

Anesthesiology - economics

Anesthesia - economics

Anesthesiology - organization & administration

Anesthetics - administration & dosage

General Surgery - manpower

Workload

Details

Title: Subtitle: Monitoring changes in individual surgeon's workloads using anesthesia data
Creators: Franklin Dexter - Division of Management Consulting, Department of Anesthesia, University of Iowa, 200 Hawkins Drive, 6JCP, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA. Franklin-Dexter@UIowa.edu
Danielle Masursky
Johannes Ledolter
Ruth E Wachtel
Bettina Smallman
Resource Type: Journal article
Publication Details: Canadian journal of anaesthesia = Journal canadien d'anesthesie, Vol.59(6), pp.571-577
DOI: 10.1007/s12630-012-9693-9
PMID: 22431148
NLM abbreviation: Can J Anaesth
ISSN: 0832-610X
eISSN: 1496-8975
Publisher: United States
Language: English
Date published: 06/2012
Academic Unit: Statistics and Actuarial Science; Health Management and Policy; Anesthesia; Business Analytics
Record Identifier: 9983806278902771

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