Designing a cost-driven mechanism to reduce cancellation of elective surgeries

Abstract

BackgroundA significant portion of each country's budget is assigned to its health care system annually. Given the current economic conditions, saving costs is a key issue. Therefore, any situation that leads to lower efficiency and higher costs should be remedied. With much of the hospitals' budgets spent on operating rooms, it is important to use strategies to increase their efficiency and quality. The purpose of this study is to design a mechanism to reduce the cancellation of elective surgical procedures, which incurs considerable costs. MethodsTo this end, the data gathered from an educational hospital in Tehran were evaluated. The reasons for the surgical cancellations were determined through data analysis and process identification. Subsequently, considering the contents of the current literature and consultations with the hospital staff, suggestions were made to reduce surgical cancellations. Finally, using a solution allocation model, the best solution in terms of costs, efficiency, and implementation time was assigned by using the Fuzzy Extended Analytical Hierarchy Process to each of the reasons and surgeries. ResultsBy solving the allocation model using the GAMs software, the solutions were assigned to specific reasons and surgeries. This solved model assigns the best solutions to cancellation reasons regarding solutions cost, efficiency and implementation time. ConclusionsThe cancellation of the six investigated surgeries alone imposes on the hospital approximately 1165,653,450 rials annually, so it is true to assume that, in general, reducing the cancellation of surgery can reduce hospital costs considerably.