Comparison of Number of Surgical Operations and Their Cancellation Causes in Namazi Hospital before and after the Health Transformation Plan

Surgery cancellation at the last moments is one of the most important causes of inefficiency and waste of hospital resources, which results in operating room disorder, waste of time, wandering and unemployment of personnel, and useless occupation of hospital beds. Therefore, the present study aimed to compare the number of surgical operations and their cancellation causes before and after the healthcare reform.
The present cross-sectional study was conducted in Namazi hospital, Shiraz. The specifications of all the required surgeries were collected from June 22, 2014 to February 20, 2015 through census and were recorded in a researcher-made checklist. The study variables included the number of performed surgical operations per month, number of cancelled surgical operations per month, and their cancellation causes. The data were analyzed using the SPSS statistical software, version 20.
The number of surgical operations was increased after the healthcare reform. Besides, the index of surgery cancellation was decreased from 11.73% to 10.94% after the reform. The most common causes of surgery cancellation before the healthcare reform were the factors related to surgeons. On the other hand, the most common causes of surgery cancellation after the healthcare reform were organizational and managerial factors, the most common of which being lack of time in operating rooms.
It seems that the reform has been able to reduce surgery cancellation rate to a great extent. Nevertheless, proper planning for elimination of the preventable causes, proper management for use of the maximum capacity of operating rooms, and improvement of surgical operation processes are essential in order to promote the surgery cancellation index.