Incorrectly Charted Operating Rooms, With Resulting Overlapping Times, Corrected Using Meta-Data From Monitors Transmitting Pulse Oximetry Measurements

Recorded operating rooms (ORs) in electronic health records can differ from the actual anesthetizing locations. A retrospective cohort of cases revealed a 40% (846/2123) room location error rate in the obstetrical (OB) suite compared to 0.03% (18/56,044) in 3 large surgical suites. Using meta-data providing physical locations of monitors transmitting pulse oximetry measurements and technicians' manual logs of replacement monitors, all actual ORs of the cases were determined. Simply identifying listed overlaps of cases in the same OR to identify potential location errors was insufficient for OB because surgical cases were infrequently ongoing simultaneously. We recommend overlap checking by suite.