A robust estimation model for surgery durations with temporal, operational, and surgery team effects.

For effective operating room (OR) planning, surgery duration estimation is critical. Overestimation leads to underutilization of expensive hospital resources (e.g.

Improving prediction of surgery duration using operational and temporal factors.

Inherent uncertainties in surgery durations impact many critical metrics about the performance of an operating room (OR) environment. OR schedules that are robust to natural variability in surgery durations require surgery duration estimates that are unbiased, with high accuracy, and with few cases with large absolute errors. Earlier studies have shown that factors such as patient severity, personnel, and procedure type greatly affect the accuracy of such estimations.