Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to determine the significant factors that cause delays in surgery operations in a hospital and factors that affect productivity of surgery clinics.

Design/methodology/approach: Data are collected from surgery clinics of an international hospital to identify main factors that affect delays in surgery operation. A design of experiment is then performed and the significance of the effects of these factors is determined. A regression model was also developed to find a relation between surgery delays and the selected factors.

Findings: The results show that such factors as the type of doctors and missing information significantly affect the delay in surgery operations as compared with some other factors, such as admission time considered in the study.

Research limitations/implications: The models developed and the results obtained in this paper are specific to the application presented. However, the procedures are general and can be applied to similar problems.

Practical implications: The results of the study can be used to control important factors to reduce the delays in surgery operations, reduce risks in patient health related to these delays, reduce hospital costs and improve the productivity of these clinics.

Originality/value: The paper considers a management problem related to surgery delays which has not been considered before and presents a procedure to study the causes of the problem. It provides a methodology that could be used to study similar problems in health care management systems and to improve these systems by analyzing operations and activities with respect to the factors that affect productivity and efficiency of such operations.