Characteristics of Operating Room Procedures in U.S. Hospitals, 2011

Excerpt

Patients admitted to the hospital may undergo a variety of treatments, including medical therapy involving administration of medications, diagnostic or therapeutic procedures (such as an X-ray) that occur outside the operating room (OR), and major OR procedures (such as appendectomy). Approximately 15 million hospital stays each year in the United States involve OR procedures. On average, hospital stays that involve an OR procedure have been reported to be 2.5 times more costly than stays that do not involve an OR procedure.

Identifying the volume, characteristics, and costs of OR procedures can help policymakers and researchers better understand population health and facilitate health care improvement efforts. Changes in health care provider payment arrangements and advances in medical practice and technology can impact the nature of the procedures that are performed in hospital operating rooms. For example, some less complex surgical procedures, such as cataract surgery, that were once routinely performed in inpatient hospital operating rooms are now primarily performed in the ambulatory surgery setting.

This Statistical Brief presents data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) on characteristics of OR procedures in 2011. For this Statistical Brief, OR procedures are defined using the HCUP procedure classes tool. In this tool, OR procedures are identified based on diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) that use physician panels to determine whether the procedure would be performed in a hospital OR in most hospitals. The findings in this Statistical Brief represent an update to 2007 statistics reported by Elixhauser and Andrews. Patient characteristics, resource use, and outcomes are provided for stays with and without OR procedures. The most frequent and most costly OR procedures also are presented. All differences between estimates noted in the text are significant at the .0001 level or better.