Improved OR design can lead to reduced costs

Operating rooms (ORs) are often a financial hub for many health care systems. As such, studies have shown the efficient utilization of ORs can lead to not only improvements in patient satisfaction and staff experience but also cost savings.

“Research shows that shorter surgery duration would reduce postoperative complications, reduce hospital length of stay, reduce delays and cancellations of surgeries, improve patient satisfaction and reduce health care costs,” says Xiaobo Quan, Ph.D., EDAC, associate professor at the School of Architecture & Design at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

While Quan gleaned that insight from published studies, he wanted to provide hospital leaders with equally indisputable recommendations regarding how design can actually reduce OR costs. As such, he embarked on a study that analyzed how OR design can contribute to the reduction of surgery duration by minimizing disruptions and movements.

Quan observed 70 unilateral total knee or hip replacement surgeries that took place in two differently designed ORs at a community hospital. Quan relied on computer-based forms adapted from recent research to measure the surgery duration, environment-related disruptions and ambulatory movements. 

Potential confounding factors like surgery type were controlled in statistical analyses.

After observing all these surgeries, the researcher concluded that significantly shorter surgery durations were recorded in the larger OR, with more clearances on both sides of the operating table, a wider door located on the sidewall, more cabinets and more clearance between the circulator workstation and the sterile field. This OR also was associated with less frequent disruptions and fewer movements per case, according to the study, “Can Operating Room Design Make Orthopedic Surgeries Shorter, Safer, and More Efficient?: A Quasi-Experimental Study,” published in HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal.

With these results in hand, health care leaders “should establish the reduction of surgery duration as an important goal of OR design and a metric in evaluating the design proposal and the post-occupancy evaluation,” Quan says.