Factors Affecting Utilization of Operating Rooms in a Tertiary Care Hospital

This exploratory study was conducted in multi speciality tertiary care 90 bed hospital in National Capital Region with an objective to understand the functional process of existing operation theatre complex and assessment of Operating Room (OR) utilization. Operating Rooms of any hospital requires huge investments on capital as well as manpower. Therefore, the hospital management encourages maximum utilization to ensure optimum return on investment. Typically 9-10% of the hospital revenue is spent on operating area while it generates 50-60 % of the total revenue.

The study was carried for 30 days in the month of June 2012 to July 2012 in order to actually see how much time is spent on each of the different activities carried out in Operating Rooms. According to the result of the study, entire surgical procedure is divided into six main activities. In that, maximum time is spent (around 50%) on actual surgery and remaining time is for other activities like cleaning, anaesthesia, administration, anaesthesia reversal etc. The study revealed that the utilization of all the operation theatre is between 30 to 40 percent which is much below its capacity and there is a scope to improve the utilization level. Maximum utilisation is observed in the morning shift. The trend between January to June 2012 shows that except for the month of May 2012, the utilisation pattern is almost same. In the month of May 2012, there is a slight improvement in terms of utilisation of operation theatre. The study suggests that for optimum utilization, attention must be paid for the coordination of different activities within the OR as well as and other associated activities related to surgery.