Anaesthesia
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Comparative Study
Rational planning of operating lists: a prospective comparison of 'booking to the mean' vs. 'probabilistic case scheduling' in urology.
The efficient use of operating theatres requires accurate case scheduling. One common method is 'booking to the mean'. Here, the mean times for individual operations are summed to approximate the time allocated to the list. ⋯ Booking to the mean resulted in 53/60 (88%) lists over-running and correctly predicted the finish times in just 13% of lists. Out of 264 patients, 36 (14%) were cancelled on the day due to over-runs in 24/60 (40%) lists. In contrast, probabilistic scheduling correctly predicted an over-run or under-run in 77% of lists, which would have allowed the case mix to be adjusted to prevent cancellation and optimise utilisation.