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Review on choosing the patient ready time on the day of surgery using historical data on scheduled versus actual start times
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Review on choosing the patient ready time on the day of surgery using historical data on scheduled versus actual start times

Nafisa Mostofa, Franklin Dexter and Sarah S. Titler
JCA Advances, Vol.3(2), 100246
06/2026
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcadva.2026.100246
url
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcadva.2026.100246View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

All patients scheduled for outpatient surgery or admission on the day of surgery need a designated time to be ready for the operating room. Searches were performed in Scopus. The principal causes of variability in operating room times were not related to surgeon behavior and scheduling, but process variability of the surgical procedures and parameter uncertainty due to few historical data on which to estimate operating room times. The ready time and fasting time of each patient can be chosen in such a system, incorporating the probability of preceding cases being cancelled and/or cases being moved among operating rooms, by selecting the optimal critical quantile of the ratios of actual start times to scheduled start times, counting from the start of the workday. We provide a Supplemental Excel file with the corresponding statistical implementation for reader's data. We also include a Supplemental PDF with details of the search protocols and statistical findings so that our narrative review serves as a single reference to be provided to the administrator, clinician, or other professional concerned with evidence-based approaches to choosing patient-ready and arrival times.
 Appointments and schedules Efficiency Models Operating rooms/organization & administration Organizational Quality improvement Statistical Time factors

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