The study of 400 NHS operating theatres found that last year, less than 50 per cent of time scheduled for operations was actually spent performing surgery.In orthopaedics, the biggest specialty, just 45 per cent of "operating time" was spent on surgery, while 33 per cent of time was lost to late starts and decisions to stop work early.
In ophthalmology, only 40 per cent of allocated time was devoted to operations – while 37 per cent of time was wasted at the start and end of the day.
Gaps between treating patients, cancelled operations and gaps on the surgery lists accounted for thousands more hours wasted.
The study by the NHS Foundation Trust Network examined detailed timekeeping records kept by clinical teams at 40 NHS trusts, as they performed 26,000 operations.
This story was from the Telegraph. What would be really useful, of course, is a comparison with other hospitals. How do private hospitals fare here and in other countries?
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in NHS • Waste in public services
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This has long been a bone of contention to me. When I worked in industry, production line down time was costed at around £30,000 per hour. We ran 24 hours/day 360 days/year, and woe betide anyone who stopped the production line.
I would guess operation numbers could perhaps be quadrupled with limited additional cost if hospitals were run with a bit of business type efficiency. So why has this never happened?
Posted by: john east at July 5, 2010 10:57 PM
There was some mention of the operating theatre wastage on the BBC programme which had What's-His-Namw looking into the NHS in a kind of Business Inspector role. Sorry I can't remember the details.
Posted by: SadButMadLad at July 7, 2010 06:29 PM
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Your readers may wish to find the original reports at http://www.nhsconfed.org/Networks/FoundationTrust/benchmarking/Pages/FTNbenchmarking.aspx though it isn't entirely clear how they defined some of their figures
I work as a surgeon, and these issues are very frustrating for us - we want to operate, that's what we do. Most lists are scheduled to last about 4 hours, for which you have a list of patients to operate on. Because everyone is different, you can't be certain how long the anaesthetic is going to take to get given, and how long the surgery will take to perform.
Given over-running is very difficult to manage (everyone starts disappearing, getting overtime, etc etc), and cancelling a patient on the day is bad practice, there is little alternative but be a bit conservative on how much you attempt to get done on any list - so I am not at all surprised that some time is lost to early finishes. No data is given about over-runs.
Some of the other points suggest that time spent giving the anaesthetic is a waste of theatre time! I think if you were under anaesthetic, you would want your anaesthetist by your side, not in the next room putting the next patient to sleep.
That said, I am certain that there is plenty of scope for improvement, but I don't think the Telegraph article is helpful
Posted by: George at July 5, 2010 10:27 AM