Projects: Healthcare Management Analytics Lab

Successful surgeries require teamwork. Anesthesiologists, nurses, surgeons, and other medical professionals meet in the operating room and must coordinate their efforts toward positive clinical outcomes. Yet the norm in medical institutions around the U.S. is for these teams to rarely stick together from procedure to procedure; in fact, regulations and policies often require that individuals swap in and out in the course of a single procedure. This lack of consistency in team structure may have grave consequences, and research indicates that notable surgical failures are sometimes due to inconsistent teaming.

This project will investigate the potential efficiency gains and losses of instituting policies to keep surgical teams intact, and investigate better ways to facilitate teaming when assigning personnel to procedures.