Costs of disposable material in the operating room do not show high correlation with surgical time: Implications for hospital payment.

Objectives: The objectives of this study are to analyze the variation of the surgical time and of disposable costs per surgical procedure and to analyze the association between disposable costs and the surgical time.

Methods: The registration of data was done in an operating room of a 419 bed general hospital, over a period of three months (n = 1556 surgical procedures). Disposable material per procedure used was recorded through a barcode scanning method.

Results: The average cost (standard deviation) of disposable material is €183.66 (€183.44). The mean surgical time (standard deviation) is 96 min (63). Results have shown that the homogeneity of operating time and DM costs was quite good per surgical procedure. The correlation between the surgical time and DM costs is not high (r = 0.65).

Conclusions: In a context of Diagnosis Related Group (DRG) based hospital payment, it is important that costs information systems are able to precisely calculate costs per case. Our results show that the correlation between surgical time and costs of disposable materials is not good. Therefore, empirical data or itemized lists should be used instead of surgical time as a cost driver for the allocation of costs of disposable materials to patients.