The measurement of complexity in surgical pathology

The quantitation of effort both within and among surgical pathology laboratories is data which is being increasingly sought by physician managers, hospital administrators and managed care organizations. Simple measurement of case numbers fails to adequately represent the work of a laboratory. The complexity of the cases reviewed is likely to explain a significant portion of the variance in the time required to bring a case to final diagnosis. Measures which adequately reflect complexity in surgical pathology cases have not been developed. We have studied variety of extractable report features and correlated these with the time required for case sign-out. Numbers of slides reviewed and total lines factual data provided were strong correlates of the time required to complete case review, report construction and verification. Such data suggests that models can be constructed based on data that can be learned from case reports and records which will relate such data to actual work time.