Opportunity cost of mean 1.7 minutes of tardiness of late first case of the day starts

Hicks et al. estimated opportunity costs of first case delays.1 The authors summarized our study2 as showing “delays in first case start times” can be “an important cause for increased staffing needs and overtime labor costs.” Hicks1 appropriately estimated the “opportunity cost related to first case delays” “using the cost of idle labor and overtime for staffing rooms beyond the scheduled en d times.”1 They did so with “designated eight-hour blocks.”1 They obtained a “total loss of 631 hours” by summing, over cases from 2018, times from the start of the regular workday until the patient entered each operating room (OR).

Source: American Journal of Surgery - October 10, 2019 Category: Surgery Authors: Franklin Dexter, Richard H. Epstein Tags: Letter to the Editor Source Type: research