Decentralised pre-surgery testing boosts operating room activity in Spain:
This article was originally published in Clinica
Executive Summary
A Spanish hospital is claiming a breakthrough in making more efficient its management of surgical patients, by performing pre-anaesthetic testing at local health centres. Until now, the Reina Sofia University Hospital, in Cordoba, Andalucia, has performed this testing for all the patients the hospital group receives from across the province, forcing them to travel often great distances, while imposing an extra organisational burden on the hospital. These factors were found to significantly affect OR throughput, adding to the hospital's surgical waiting list. This currently numbers 5,000 patients, of whom 60% have waited less than two months, and 14% between four and six months. The four hospitals in the Reina Sofia group performed 33,400 operations in 2005, up 7.7% on the previous year.