55 research outputs found
Development of an Objective Structured Clinical Examination as a Component of Assessment for Initial Board Certification in Anesthesiology.
With its first administration of an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) in 2018, the American Board of Anesthesiology (ABA) became the first US medical specialty certifying board to incorporate this type of assessment into its high-stakes certification examination system. The fundamental rationale for the ABA's introduction of the OSCE is to include an assessment that allows candidates for board certification to demonstrate what they actually "do" in domains relevant to clinical practice. Inherent in this rationale is that the OSCE will capture competencies not well assessed in the current written and oral examinations-competencies that will allow the ABA to judge whether a candidate meets the standards expected for board certification more properly. This special article describes the ABA's journey from initial conceptualization through first administration of the OSCE, including the format of the OSCE, the process for scenario development, the standardized patient program that supports OSCE administration, examiner training, scoring, and future assessment of reliability, validity, and impact of the OSCE. This information will be beneficial to both those involved in the initial certification process, such as residency graduate candidates and program directors, and others contemplating the use of high-stakes summative OSCE assessments
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Since the COVID-19 pandemic, approximately 90% of elective anesthetics have been ambulatory: A retrospective analysis of statewide data in Florida from 2010 through 2022
When the vast majority (e.g., ≈90%) of a specialty's elective (scheduled) care is ambulatory (i.e., length of stay 0 or 1 night), the administrative, clinical, and economic policy implications are profound. We examined the progressive shift of elective anesthetics in Florida from inpatient to ambulatory, from the first quarter of 2010 through the fourth quarter of 2022. We were particularly interested in the most recent data following the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions on elective surgery in the state.
This retrospective cohort study included major therapeutic and major diagnostic procedures with >0 American Society of Anesthesiologists base units in the state of Florida inpatient and ambulatory surgery databases. The last 8 quarters of these operating room anesthetic data corresponded to the end of restrictions on elective surgery in Florida due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our goal was to determine whether the overall mean percentage of cases with 0- or 1-day lengths of stay has reached 90% since the lifting of pandemic restrictions. Numbers of cases over periods of at least four weeks tend to follow normal distributions. Therefore, we analyzed the N = 8 quarters of cases from 2021 to 2022 using Student's t-test. The study was performed when there were N = 8 quarters available from the Florida healthcare databases.
There were overall 22,584,752 surgical cases studied. The percentages of elective anesthetics with length of stay ≤1-day increased progressively from 2010 through 2020. Among the eight successive quarters since the end of pandemic-related elective surgery restrictions, the percentage of elective cases with length of stay 0- or 1 day was stable, averaging 90% (95% two-sided confidence interval 89.4% to 90.3%).
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the mean quarterly percentage of elective surgery cases with anesthesia in Florida that were ambulatory has been reliably ≈90%. Implications include value in expecting overnight post-anesthesia care unit stay in ambulatory surgery centers and scheduling and sequencing cases based on post-anesthesia care unit capacity. Furthermore, because the vast majority (i.e., ≈90%) of cases would be excluded (i.e., not involve hospital admission for at least 2 midnights), there is a minimal role that risk-adjusted hospital length of stay and mortality can have in evaluating anesthesia department overall quality and economic effectiveness.
•Since COVID-19 pandemic, has the percentage elective cases ambulatory averaged ≈90%?•We studied elective anesthetics in Florida, whether length of stay was 0 or 1 day vs. longer.•As expected, the percentage increased progressively from 2010 through 2020.•For 2021–2022, the percentage has been stable, averaging 90%.•Policy makers should plan on inpatient surgery being a small percentage of elective cases
Association of surgeons’ gender with elective surgical lists in the State of Florida is explained by differences in mean operative caseloads
Background A recent publication reported that at three hospitals within one academic health system, female surgeons received less surgical block time than male surgeons, suggesting potential gender-based bias in operating room scheduling. We examined this observation’s generalizability. Methods Our cross-sectional retrospective cohort study of State of Florida administrative data included all 4,176,551 ambulatory procedural encounters and inpatient elective surgical cases performed January 2017 through December 2019 by 8875 surgeons (1830 female) at all 609 non-federal hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers. There were 1,509,190 lists of cases (i.e., combinations of the same surgeon, facility, and date). Logistic regression adjusted for covariables of decile of surgeon’s quarterly cases, surgeon’s specialty, quarter, and facility. Results Selecting randomly a male and a female surgeons’ quarter, for 66% of selections, the male surgeon performed more cases (P Conclusions Our results confirm the aforementioned single university health system results but show that the differences between male and female surgeons in their lists were not due to systematic bias in operating room scheduling (e.g., completing three brief elective cases in a week on three different workdays) but in their total case numbers. The finding that surgeons performing lists comprising a single case were more often female than male provides a previously unrecognized reason why operating room managers should help facilitate the workload of surgeons performing only one case on operative (anesthesia) workdays
Similarities Between Pediatric and General Hospitals Based on Fundamental Attributes of Surgery Including Cases Per Surgeon Per Workday
Introduction Operating room (OR) management decision-making at both pediatric and adult hospitals is determined, in large part, by the same fundamental attributes of surgery and other considerations related to case duration prediction. These include the non-preemptive nature of surgeries, wide prediction limits for case duration, and constraints to moving or resequencing cases on the day of surgery. Another attribute fundamentally affecting OR management is the median number of cases a surgeon performs on their OR days. Most adult surgeons have short lists of cases (i.e., one or two cases per day). Similarly, at adult hospitals, growth in caseloads is mostly due to the subset of those surgeons who also operate just once or twice per week. It is unknown if these characteristics of surgery apply to pediatric surgeons and pediatric hospitals as well. Methods Our retrospective cohort study included all elective surgical cases performed at the six pediatric hospitals in Florida during 2018 and 2019 (n = 71,340 cases). We calculated the percentages of combinations of surgeon, date, and hospital (lists) comprising one or two cases, or just one case, and determined if the values were statistically >50% (i.e., indicative of "most"). We determined if most of the growth in caseload and intraoperative work relative value units (wRVUs) at the pediatric hospitals between 2018 and 2019 accrued from low-caseload surgeons. Results are reported as mean ± standard error of the mean. Results Averaging among the six pediatric hospitals, the non-holiday weekday lists of most surgeons at each facility had just one or two elective cases, inpatient and/or ambulatory (68.1%; p = 0.016 vs. 50%, n = 27,557 lists). Growth in surgical caseloads from 2018 to 2019 was mostly attributable to surgeons who in 2018 averaged ≤2.0 cases per week (76.3% ± 5.4%, p = 0.0085 vs. 50%). Similarly, growth in wRVUs was mostly attributable to these low-caseload surgeons (73.8% ± 5.4%, p = 0.017 vs. 50%). Conclusions Like adult hospitals, most pediatric surgeons' lists of cases consist of only one or two cases per day, with many lists containing a single case. Similarly, growth at pediatric hospitals accrued from low-caseload surgeons who performed one or two cases per week in the preceding year. These findings indicate that hospitals desiring to increase their surgical caseload should ensure that low-caseload surgeons are provided access to the OR schedule. Additionally, since percent-adjusted utilization and raw utilization cannot be accurately measured for low-caseload surgeons, neither metric should be used to allocate OR time to individual surgeons. Since most adult and pediatric surgeons have low caseloads, this is a fundamental attribute of surgery
More surgery in December among US patients with commercial insurance is offset by unrelated but lesser surgery among patients with Medicare insurance
Study Objective Evaluate whether there is more surgery (in the US State of Florida) at the end of the year, specifically among patients with commercial insurance. Design Observational cohort study. Setting The 712 facilities in Florida that performed inpatient or outpatient elective surgery from January 2010 through December 2019. Results Among patients with commercial insurance, December had more cases than November (1.108 [1.092-1.125]) or January (1.257 [1.229-1.286]). In contrast, among patients with Medicare insurance (traditional or managed care), December had fewer cases than November (ratio 0.917 [99% confidence interval 0.904-0.930]) or January (0.823 [0.807-0.839]) of the same year. Summing among all cases, December did not have more cases than November (ratio 1.003 [0.992-1.014]) or January (0.998 [0.984-1.013]). Comparing December versus November (January) ratios for cases among patients with commercial insurance to the corresponding ratios for cases among patients with Medicare, years with more commercial insurance cases had more Medicare cases (Spearman rank correlation +0.36 [+0.25], both p < 0.0001). Conclusions In the US State of Florida, although some surgeons' procedural workloads may have seasonal variation if they care mostly for patients with one category of insurance, surgical facilities with patients undergoing many procedures will have less variability. Importantly, more commercial insurance cases were not causing Medicare cases to be postponed or vice-versa, providing mechanistic explanation for why forecasts of surgical demand can reasonably be treated as the sum of the independent workloads among many surgeons
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Most surgeons' daily elective lists in Florida comprise only 1 or 2 elective cases, making percent utilization unreliable for planning individual surgeons' block time
Operating room (OR) utilization has been shown in multiple studies to be an inappropriate metric for planning OR time for individual surgeons. Among surgeons with low daily caseloads, percentage utilization cannot be measured accurately because confidence limits are extremely wide. In Iowa, a largely rural state, most surgeons performed only 1 or 2 elective cases on their OR days. To assess generalizability, we analyzed Florida, a state with many high-population density areas.
Observational cohort study.
The 602 facilities in Florida that performed inpatient or outpatient elective surgery from January 2010 through December 2019.
The providers licensed to perform surgery in Florida (physician, oral surgeons, dentists, and podiatrists) were identified by their national provider number. Hospitals were deidentified before analysis.
The primary endpoint was the mean among facilities in percentages of surgeon-day combinations (“lists”) containing 1 or 2 cases. Proportions were calculated using Freeman-Tukey transformation and the harmonic mean of the number of lists at each facility. Comparison to “most” (>50%) used Student's two-sided one-group t-test.
Averaging among hospitals, most surgeons' lists included 1 or 2 cases (64.4%; 99% confidence interval [CI] 61.3%–67.4%) P < 0.00001). Many lists had 1 case (44.2%, 99% CI 41.2%–47.2%). Nearly all (96.7%) surgeons operated at just one hospital on their OR days.
Most surgeons' lists of elective surgical cases comprised 1 or 2 cases in the largely urban state of Florida, as previously found in the largely rural state of Iowa. Results were insensitive to organizational size or county population. Thus, our finding is generalizable in the United States. Consequently, neither adjusted nor raw utilization should be used solely when allocating OR time to individual surgeons. Anesthesia and nursing coverage of cases can be based on maximizing the efficiency of use of OR time.
•Percent utilization of block time is often reported, despite its lack of utility.•Utilization cannot be accurately calculated for surgeons with low daily caseloads.•Most surgeons in Florida have daily elective lists with only 1 or 2 cases.•Allocation of block time to surgeons should not be based on percentage utilization
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