Surgical Care in Specialist Ophthalmology Departments: Structure and Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Background: Specialist ophthalmology departments contribute to the surgical care of German patients. Outpatient and inpatient surgeries were restricted during the COVID-19 pandemic and led to a sharp decline in the number of cases in ophthalmological care. The aim of this analysis was to improve the understanding of the logistic structures of medical facilities as well as the effects of the pandemic.

Operating Room Efficiency before and after Entrance in a Benchmarking Program for Surgical Process Data.

Operating room (OR) efficiency continues to be a high priority for hospitals. In this context the concept of benchmarking has gained increasing importance as a means to improve OR performance. The aim of this study was to investigate whether and how participation in a benchmarking and reporting program for surgical process data was associated with a change in OR efficiency, measured through raw utilization, turnover times, and first-case tardiness.

Delays in starting morning operating lists: an analysis of more than 20,000 cases in 22 German hospitals.

Introduction: Delays in the start of the first operation of the day often lead to conflicts among the involved physicians and nurses. Data on such delays have already been published for individual hospitals, but robust comparative data from a large number of institutions have not been available till now.

Methods: The study is based on the operating room (OR) documentation of four surgical services (general surgery, trauma/orthopedic surgery, gynecology, and ear nose throat [ENT] surgery) in 22 German hospitals over a nine-month period.