Statistical analysis of differences in turnover times among operating theatres

Overdyk et al1 used remote video auditing with real-time feedback in a surgical suite. As part of their randomised trial clustered by theatre, they report less turnover times among ‘fast rooms’, those generally including three or greater cases per day. Successive turnover times between scheduled cases within theatres on the same date tend to be correlated (eg, caused by same surgeon, nurses and anaesthetist). This was shown in Dexter et al2 and Austin et al.3 Overdyk et al's description of their statistical model seems not to describe consideration of correlations of turnover times within the same theatre on the same day. This can be rectified by including the theatre-day combination as a fixed or random effect. Alternatively, and typically, analyses take the simpler approach of batching (binning) by each day, week, 2-week or 4-week period, and then comparing the periods (eg, week) pairwise...
Source: BMJ Quality and Safety - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Electronic pages Source Type: research