An Iterative Algorithm for Workflow Analysis in a Day Surgery Center

Operating room (OR) is a critical and costly asset in hospitals. Effective management is crucial for cost reduction, improved patient outcomes, and resource optimization in ORs. To bolster operational efficiency, numerous hospitals have established day surgery centers for surgeries not requiring an overnight hospital stay. However, in order to effectively manage day surgeries, detailed analysis of workflow is needed, which is lacking in current literature. To address this gap, this letter presents to study workflow in day surgery centers. Using an absorbing Markov chain model for a single OR, an iterative algorithm is applied to compute daily performance metrics for systems incorporating multiple ORs, without succumbing to the curse of dimensionality. Numerical experiments and a case study confirm the accuracy and computational efficiency of the method.