DOCC (Data-based Operation & Communication Center) Surgery PAN (Data Delivery Tool): Samsung Medical Center

In tertiary general hospitals, where many surgical departments are located, the wait time for patients requiring surgery may be extended due to the limited number of operating rooms.

• Solving this issue of wait times for surgery can be addressed not only by physically increasing the number of operating rooms but also by finding ways to use the available rooms more efficiently.

We have made efforts to establish and extend a culture of sharing operating rooms so that rooms assigned to a specific surgeon, but unused—such as when the surgeon is away for an academic conference—can be used by another surgeon.

• When it was recognized that a specific operating room (e.g., one normally used for endocrine surgery) would be empty, computerized scheduling was used to systematically open that operating room to the same medical division (e.g., Endocrine Surgery) four weeks in advance, the same medical department (e.g., General Surgery) two weeks in advance, and other medical departments (e.g., Urology) one week in advance.

Additionally, Surgery PAN*, which provides information on the estimated time of surgeries, helped ensure tighter scheduling, leaving no rooms empty during regular working hours (ex. 08:00–17:00). In particular, knowing the time information for each operating room allowed surgeries expected to start after regular hours to be moved to rooms becoming available two hours before the end of regular working hours.

* The name ‘PAN’ comes from the Korean word for a bulletin board.

As a result of the increased surgeries during regular hours made possible by sharing and rescheduling surgeries, an average of 3.5 more regular surgeries were performed per day in 2023 compared to 2021, enabling additional 864 regular surgeries per year as of 247 business days. Additionally, the rate of breast cancer patients undergoing surgery within 30 days after visiting the hospital—a government-evaluated indicator—rose from 33.9% in 2021 to 54.7% in 2023, an increase of 61.1%.

• No patient safety issues were observed due to these schedule adjustments; the intervention using DOCC Surgery PAN did not significantly affect the length of stay or the likelihood of surgical complications, readmissions, or reoperations within 30/60 days (all p-values > 0.1).