Instituting interprofessional preoperative anesthesia interview guidelines at an outpatient periodontics office

Preoperative anesthesia interviews lacking necessary health history information may lead to cancelled or delayed elective cases on the day of surgery (DOS) in outpatient settings. This project introduced interprofessional preoperative anesthesia interview guidelines (IPAIG) at an outpatient periodontics office to reduce case cancellations and improve efficiency. A pre-and-post descriptive project involving interview instructions, a script, and revised patient intake forms was implemented to compare the reasons for DOS case cancellations before and after the introduction of IPAIG for office staff. A Fisher's exact test was used to describe changes in clinical outcomes. Six months post-implementation of IPAIG, a retrospective medical chart review revealed decreased avoidable DOS case cancellations from 0.67% in the pre-implementation period to 0.36% in the post-implementation period. The IPAIG reduced avoidable day of surgery case cancellations, improved office efficiency, and can be applied to a variety of clinical settings.