At most hospitals in the state of Iowa, most surgeons' daily lists of elective cases include only 1 or 2 cases: Individual surgeons' percentage operating room utilization is a consistently unreliable metric

Accurate confidence intervals for raw or adjusted utilizations are so wide for individual surgeons that decisions based on utilization are equivalent to decisions based on random error. The implication of the current study is generalizability of that finding from the largest teaching hospital in the state to the other hospitals in the state.