Stoddard Douglas R, Sebesta James A, Welder Matthew D, Foster Andrew J, Rush Robert M
Madigan Army Medical Center, 9040 Jackson Avenue, Tacoma, WA 98431.
Office of the Surgeon General, U.S. Army Medical Command, 7700 Arlington Boulevard, Falls Church, VA 22032.
Mil Med. 2016 Mar;181(3):236-42. doi: 10.7205/MILMED-D-15-00072.
The idea of the preoperative anesthesia clinic as a means of examining and treating the patient so that he will arrive in the operating theater as strong and healthy as possible is well established in practice and literature.However, problems in clinic design and execution often result in high patient waiting times, decreased patient and staff satisfaction, decreased patient capacity, and high clinic costs. Although the details of clinic design, outcomes, and satisfaction have been extensively evaluated at civilian hospitals, we have not found corresponding literature addressing these issues specifically within military preoperative evaluation clinics. We find that changing to an appointment-based (versus walk-in) system and eliminating data collection step redundancies will likely result in lower wait times, higher satisfaction, lower per patient costs, and a more streamlined and resource-efficient structure.
