Cancellation on the Day of Surgery in an Ambulatory Setting - A Retrospective Analysis

Background: Cancellations on the day of surgery represent an important setback for patients and pose considerable drawbacks for healthcare management. Part of these cancellations are due to patients’ factors. Some studies have addressed this issue in inpatient care, but scarce information is found regarding ambulatory setting. This work intended to analyse the parameters that are important in patient cancellation on the day of surgery for ambulatory surgery, with a closer analysis on those that are patient dependent, specifying those that are significant in order to anticipate which patients will be cancelled beforehand. Methods: This work analysed a total of 19781 patients enrolled for elective day-case surgery in 2018, from which 1253 (6.33%) made a cancellation on their day of surgery. Results: Patients residing closer to the hospital ( 10 km away (p<0.05). Also, patients with 65 years of age or more had a higher cancellation rate (p<0.05). Finally, patients without a prior pre operative medical appointment might have a higher likelihood of same day cancellation (5.8% vs 14.01%, p<0.05). T-test and Chi-square tests were used with a level of significance of 0.05. Conclusions: We expect this work can contribute to anticipate the cancellation of a given patient, enabling quicker treatment with optimised resources.