Overlapping Surgery: A Case Study in Operating Room Throughput and Efficiency.

A keystone of operating room (OR) management is proper OR allocation to optimize access, safety, efficiency, and throughput. Access is important to surgeons, and overlapping surgery may increase patient access to surgeons with specialized skill sets and facilitate the training of medical students, residents, and fellows. Overlapping surgery is commonly performed in academic medical centers, although recent public scrutiny has raised debate about its safety, necessitating monitoring. This article introduces a system to monitor overlapping surgery, providing a surgeon-specific Key Performance Indicator, and discusses overlapping surgery as an approach toward OR management goals of efficiency and throughput.