Prioritization for elective dental treatment under general anesthesia.

This paper describes the process and outcomes of an initiative to develop a system to prioritize operating room bookings for children who require elective dental treatment. This initiative had 3 objectives: to improve the timeliness of treatment in the operating room based on medical and dental need, to provide a means to identify and expedite the highest-priority cases when operating room time became available, and to document the prioritization of cases as a quality assurance measure. Each patient booked for treatment in the operating room was assigned a priority ranking based on a combination of their medical risk and dental status.