Skip to main content
SIR 2025 Event Main banner
BSCI - Consideration Cases Ad 1
Merit/DPSSME Siege
Back

SIR 2025

General IR

Scientific Session

Session: Practice Development, Economics, and Quality 1

Interventional Radiology Impact in Inpatient Length of Stay: Analysis of Causation, Efficiency and Finances

Sunday, March 30, 2025
3:36 PM – 3:45 PM CT
Location: Music City Center, 204
Purpose: To analyze the causes, lengths, and costs associated with inpatient Interventional Radiology (IR) procedural delays and the financial impact on a 2-year period analysis.

Materials and Methods:

Data from 3,601 IR inpatient procedures from 2019-2020 were analyzed. Delayed procedures were stratified based on causation; Hospital Resource Failure Delay (HRFD), Patient Care/Preference Delay (PCPD), or Delay with Unknown Cause (DUC). The Hospital Account Records (HARs) were used to determine costs. Procedures were divided into pre-COVID (March 14–Dec 31, 2019) and COVID (March 14–Dec 31, 2020) to prevent any bias. Based on deviations from normality, Independent-Samples Mann-Whitney U Tests were used to determine to significance of average daily. Independent-Samples Mann-Kruskal-Wallis Tests with Bonferroni Adjusted Post-hoc comparisons were used to determine the statistical significance in the difference of mean-ranks between delay types.

Results: Of 3,601 inpatient procedures, 1,224 (34%) were delayed, with 68.1% due to HRFDs. The total cost of delayed IR procedures when combining both periods was $4.4M with most of the cost being due to HRFDs. Medians of the average daily cost ($2244 vs $2101; p= .023) and total cost of delays ($2552 vs $2317; p=.002) were significantly higher in COVID than pre-COVID. Delay type frequency between COVID and pre-COVID was examined using a Pearson χ2 p < .01.  Bonferroni adjusted column comparison found significant differences for No delay (68%|63%; p < .05) and delays due to resources (20%|27%; p < .05) between pre-COVID and COVID years, respectively.

Conclusion: In the period of 2019-2020, despite multiple performance improvement projects, 34% of inpatient IR procedures were delayed, primarily due to hospital resource failures (68.1%). Certainly, there are other non-IR related factors that could justify increased length of stay and costs. Focusing the analysis on the IR component, the financial impact of these delays were substantial with total delay costs reaching $4.4M for the study period. Addressing hospital resource limitations, which accounted for most delays, through strategic investments in IR infrastructure and staffing could reduce the length of stay, enhance procedural efficiency and reduce costs.