Operating room rescheduling. A practice that requires careful consideration

Points clés et solutions pour la sécurité du patient
Tool to improve professional practice - Posted on Jul 22 2025

What is it about?

The accreditation system feedback database collects care-related adverse events occurring during the routine practice of physicians and medical teams. The lessons learned are used to develop patient safety solutions (PSS) designed to improve practices, reduce the occurrence of events or mitigate their consequences. Type-3 PSSs are produced by the HAS in liaison with accreditation bodies. 

It is estimated that approximately 10% of operating room procedures are cancelled for various reasons (crioration of the patient’s clinical status, operating room unavailable due to an emergency or delays, staff or equipment shortage, etc.), and rescheduled on a different day. These reschedulings do not always go well, and may cause care-related adverse events. These adverse events may have significant consequences: modifications of the type of procedure, knock-on reschedulings, complications, delayed care, etc.

The aim of this PSS is to raise awareness among professionals working in or in collaboration with operating rooms (pharmacy, sterilisation, hospital services, etc.) of the risks that may arise when rescheduling a procedure, and to propose tools to help avoid these risks or reduce their impact.

 

Analysis

An in-depth analysis of the feedback database found 215 adverse events linked to rescheduling. The most frequently common causes were :

  • medical device not available, most often due to a failure
    to order it when rescheduling, or an overshoot of the
    expiration date (n = 57);
  • worsening of the patient’s clinical status (n = 46);
  • failure to discontinue a treatment, primarily anticoagulants,
    but also antihypertensives, biotherapies or
    chemotherapies (n = 28).

The main consequences observed were another cancellation of the procedure (n = 64) and a change of the procedure initially planned to a more complex procedure or one using a different medical device (n = 54). According to the notifiers, the vast majority of these adverse events were avoidable or probably avoidable (n = 198).

 

Risk reduction tools

This PSS proposes a list of solutions to limit the occurrence and/or severity of adverse events associated with rescheduling:

  • set up appropriate and effective operating room scheduling ;
  • facilitate coordination and communication between the professionals involved, in particular by implementing the "Cooperation between anaesthetists-resuscitation specialists and surgeons: working better as a team" PSS;
  • monitor patients to be rescheduled and inform them about the rescheduling process, in particular by using a "Cancellation of your procedure" information guide, a sample of which is provided with this PSS;
  • set out common internal rescheduling rules and use a "Rescheduling" checklist to verify certain particularly high-risk elements.

 

Contact Us

Contact accréditation des médecins