Dedicated Orthopaedic Operating Rooms: Beneficial to Patients and Providers Alike

Objective: Dedicated orthopaedic operating rooms (DOORs) are increasingly popular solutions to reducing after-hours procedures, physician fatigue, and elective schedule disruptions. Although the benefits to surgeons are well understood, there are comparatively few studies that explore the effects of DOORs on patient care. We compared treatments and outcomes for all consecutive patients with femoral neck fractures, 4 years before and 4 years after implementation of a DOOR-based schedule. Design: Retrospective case-control study. Setting: Level 1 academic trauma center. Patients: A total of 111 consecutive trauma patients undergoing surgical management of isolated OTA group 31-B femoral neck fractures. Intervention: Based on individual patient factors and fracture characteristics, patients were managed with either hemiarthroplasty or open reduction internal fixation (ORIF). Main Outcome Measures: Surgical timing, intervention type, perioperative complications, and postoperative length of stay. Results: Retrospective analysis revealed a significant decrease in after-hour surgery (4 PM-7: 30 AM) for all femoral neck fractures (66.7%-19.3%; P < 0.001). No significant differences were found between the rates of arthroplasty versus those of open reduction internal fixation. Patients undergoing surgical treatment for femoral neck fractures after DOOR suffered significantly fewer morbidities, including significantly decreased rates of postoperative intensive care unit admissions, stroke, infections, and myocardial infarction or congestive heart failure exacerbations. We also observed a significant decrease in postoperative mortality (5.6% pre-DOOR vs. 0% post-DOOR; P = 0.04). Patients undergoing hemiarthroplasty experienced a significant shorter hospitalization (14.5 days pre-DOOR vs. 9.9 days post-DOOR; P = 0.04). Conclusions: In our experience, a weekday DOOR is closely associated with improvements in both patient safety and outcomes.