Authors
Xing Li, Eli Patt, Madeline Koehn, Michael Hu, Ana Cecilia Zenteno Langle, Hrudya Viswanadh, Erin Stewart, Duncan J Flynn, Amandeep Singh
Published in
Journal of medical systems. Volume 50. Issue 1. Jun 24, 2026. Epub Jun 24, 2026.
Abstract
Rising demand for colorectal cancer screening has increased colonoscopy volume, producing backlogs and prolonged wait times. Commonly used metrics such as room utilization provide limited insight into actionable drivers of efficiency; we applied a novel throughput benchmarking framework to quantify performance and identify operational sources of inefficiency. We conducted a pilot study in a four-room outpatient endoscopy unit from July-December 2022. Using routinely recorded timestamps for procedural stages, we derived a realistic daily target throughput (RDTT). Monthly realistic target throughput (RMTT) was calculated from RDTT. Actual monthly throughput (AMT) was benchmarked against RMTT to generate a throughput efficiency ratio (TER = AMT/RMTT) and throughput variance (TV = RMTT - AMT), which was decomposed into seven predefined operational factors. AMT ranged from 567 to 717 procedures per month, whereas RMTT ranged from 1,165 to 1,332, yielding a mean TER of 53%. The largest contributors to variance were rooms closed due to lack of endoscopist assignment (45%), workflow delays (21%), and patient no-shows or late cancellations (11%). In this pilot, we demonstrate that using commonly captured operational metrics, throughput benchmarking provides a practical framework to quantify efficiency and identify specific, actionable drivers of underperformance in endoscopy operations.
PMID:
42337220
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 24 Jun 2026.
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