Effectiveness of a physician education program in reducing consumption of hospital resources in elective total hip replacement.

A physician education program altered the consumption of hospital resources by orthopedic surgeons doing total hip replacement. They were presented with verbal and written physician-specific materials during a 7-week period. Xbar and R charts were used to display measurements of resource consumption before and after the educational program. Physicians were provided with surgeon-specific data profiling their own practice and that of their peers. Inferential statistics were used to validate the effects of education. Length of hospital stay for patients receiving total hip replacement dropped from 13.7 days to 9.9 days. Adjusted total charges dropped from $22,103 to $18,607. The variance for length of stay and total charges dropped by one half or more. Physician education programs are effective in reducing consumption of hospital resources. Statistical process control data formatting appears to make the data more usable to these physicians.