Using type IV Pearson distribution to calculate the probabilities of underrun and overrun of lists of multiple cases.

BACKGROUND An efficient operating room needs both little underutilised and overutilised time to achieve optimal cost efficiency. The probabilities of underrun and overrun of lists of cases can be estimated by a well defined duration distribution of the lists. OBJECTIVE To propose a method of predicting the probabilities of underrun and overrun of lists of cases using Type IV Pearson distribution to support case scheduling. DESIGN Six years of data were collected. The first 5 years of data were used to fit distributions and estimate parameters. The data from the last year were used as testing data to validate the proposed methods. The percentiles of the duration distribution of lists of cases were calculated by Type IV Pearson distribution and t-distribution. Monte Carlo simulation was conducted to verify the accuracy of percentiles defined by the proposed methods. SETTING Operating rooms in John D. Dingell VA Medical Center, United States, from January 2005 to December 2011. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Differences between the proportion of lists of cases that were completed within the percentiles of the proposed duration distribution of the lists and the corresponding percentiles. RESULTS Compared with the t-distribution, the proposed new distribution is 8.31% (0.38) more accurate on average and 14.16% (0.19) more accurate in calculating the probabilities at the 10th and 90th percentiles of the distribution, which is a major concern of operating room schedulers. The absolute deviations between the percentiles defined by Type IV Pearson distribution and those from Monte Carlo simulation varied from 0.20  min (0.01) to 0.43  min (0.03). Operating room schedulers can rely on the most recent 10 cases with the same combination of surgeon and procedure(s) for distribution parameter estimation to plan lists of cases. Values are mean (SEM). CONCLUSION The proposed Type IV Pearson distribution is more accurate than t-distribution to estimate the probabilities of underrun and overrun of lists of cases. However, as not all the individual case durations followed log-normal distributions, there was some deviation from the true duration distribution of the lists.