Prioritization for elective dental treatment under general anesthesia.

This paper describes the process and outcomes of an initiative to develop a system to prioritize operating room bookings for children who require elective dental treatment. This initiative had 3 objectives: to improve the timeliness of treatment in the operating room based on medical and dental need, to provide a means to identify and expedite the highest-priority cases when operating room time became available, and to document the prioritization of cases as a quality assurance measure. Each patient booked for treatment in the operating room was assigned a priority ranking based on a combination of their medical risk and dental status. Measures of interrater reliability between clinician raters were moderate to good. Use of the prioritization system demonstrated improved timeliness of treatment for urgent cases and the effects of additional measures taken to reduce the waiting list.