The value of block release policies in surgical settings

Before the day of surgery, it is common for hospitals to take advantage of block release time in order to better fill operating rooms (ORs) and increase room utilization levels. Surgery groups are forced to release unscheduled OR time, which then becomes available for other groups to use. In this paper, we investigate release policies based on various surgery arrival distributions, capacity levels, and case durations. We show the tradeoffs of different policies involving assigned block and open posting rooms´ utilization levels and number of cases not accommodated in the schedule. Our results show that block release has a minor benefit for services with high room utilization (at or above 80%). Services with lower room utilizations may benefit from release, but one must consider whether to use block release or to reallocate the service´s block time.