Market capture of inpatient perioperative services using DEA.

We develop and validate a method to measure "market capture" of inpatient, elective surgery. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to measure the efficiency of the market capture for Perioperative Services at 53 non-metropolitan Pennsylvania hospitals. Eight procedures are studied, representing a wide spectrum of elective, scheduled, inpatient surgery (e.g., abdominal aortic aneurysm resection and hip replacement). Our results address issues in operating room management, such as: How should additional resources be allocated to each surgical specialty? Given existing market conditions, for which specialties can we expect to be able to increase our current workloads? Our results demonstrate DEA's potential as a valuable tool for operating room managers' strategic decision-making.