Nakata Y, Watanabe Y, Ozaki A. Productivity Change of Surgeons During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic in Japan.
Inquiry 2022;
59:469580221128737. [PMID:
36214328 PMCID:
PMC9558861 DOI:
10.1177/00469580221128737]
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Abstract
The purpose of this study is to compute surgical total factor productivity before
and during the pandemic with Malmquist index, and to evaluate the effect of
coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on its productivity change. The COVID-19
pandemic has significantly shifted healthcare resources allocation; more
healthcare resources have focused on measures against the COVID-19 pandemic. The
authors collected data from all the surgical procedures performed in Teikyo
University Hospital from April 1 through September 30 in 2019 and in 2020.
Non-radial and non-oriented Malmquist model under the constant return-to-scale
assumptions was employed. The decision-making unit was defined as a surgeon with
the highest academic rank in surgery. Inputs were defined as (1) the number of
medical doctors who assisted surgery and (2) the duration of surgical operation
from skin incision to closure. The output was defined as the surgical fee for
each surgery. The study period was divided into four 3-month periods. We added
all the inputs and outputs of the surgical procedures for each decision-making
unit during these study periods, and computed his/her Malmquist index,
efficiency change, and technical change. Four thousand six hundred and two
surgical procedures performed by 75 surgeons were analyzed. The productivity
progressed significantly during 2019 (P = .008) while the
productivity changes in 2020 were not significantly different from 0. On
year-on-year comparisons, the productivity change was not significantly
different from 0. The COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on the
productivity progress of surgery that was unrelated to its countermeasures.
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