Economics of operating room use at a university eye hospital

Background In ophthalmologic surgery, there are usually short operation times and thus many changes between the individual operations, which are not subject to remuneration. As in maximum care hospitals consecutive different operations with different durations are often performed, emergency operations have to be inserted and further training of colleagues is practiced, it is particularly important to generate the shortest possible transfer times in order to have both sufficient operation time and to be able to treat as many cases as possible. The aim of this work is to evaluate the efficiency of the surgical performance of a university eye hospital. Material and method The surgeries performed in 2021 at the MHH Eye Clinic were evaluated with respect to the spectrum, number, surgery duration, transfer times and process times. In terms of personnel, each operating room was staffed with one assistant anesthesiologist, one nurse anesthetist, two operating room nurses, one surgeon, and 20% senior anesthesiologist supervision. Based on a theoretical concept, which provides an increased staffing ratio while maintaining the same infrastructure, it was calculated how many more surgeries could be performed if the transfer time was halved and whether the additional financial expense could be compensated. Results With a total of n = 2712 surgeries performed during regular duty hours (244 working days) in 2 operating rooms (average daily n = 11.1; weekly n = 53.6 and monthly n = 237.1), the average surgery duration was 37 min and the transition time 43 min. This means that the operating rooms were used for surgery for 51% of the total operating time. Main procedures were vitrectomy with n = 1350 and cataract surgery with n = 1308. The new personnel concept provided one additional operating room nurse per operating room and one additional anesthesiologist for both operating rooms. The additional costs for this personnel expenditure were calculated at approx. 300,000 euro per year. The halving of the transfer time from 43 min to about 21 min through possible overlapping induction and parallel work, which was not possible until now, results in an additional operation time of about 100 min per operating room, so that at least 4 additional operations can be planned and performed. In this way, with stringent implementation and the same spatial structures with stable fixed costs, n = 976 more operations could be performed, which, minus the personnel costs, the additional material costs for surgery and anesthesia of 557,042 euro and the inpatient hotel costs of 600,663 euro, with an average length of stay of 2.8 days, would result in an additional revenue of about 2.4 times the additional personnel costs at the current flat rate of 3739.40 euro and an average case mix index of the MHH Eye Hospital of 0.649 (total revenue: 2,155,449 euro; profit margin II: 701,389 euro) for the considered surgical patient collective in 2021. Conclusion An increase of the personnel expenditure in the operating room for surgical subjects such as ophthalmology with shorter interventions and many changes is economically worthwhile also for a large hospital in order to enable and optimize overlapping transfers of anesthesia and surgical care. This should therefore also be considered separately, contrary to standardized staffing of the overall hospital, in order to use existing resources with their fixed costs as optimally as possible.