• Sandhya Pillai, Li Hsee, Andy Pun, Sachin Mathur, and Ian Civil.
• Acute Surgical Unit, Department of Surgery, Auckland City Hospital, Auckland, New Zealand.
• ANZ J Surg. 2013 Oct 1;83(10):739-43.

IntroductionThe acute surgical unit (ASU) is an evolving novel concept introduced to address the challenge of maintaining key performance indicators (KPIs) in the face of an increasing acute workload.MethodsThe aim of this retrospective study was to compare the performance of the ASU (from June 2008 to December 2010) at Auckland City Hospital with the traditional model (from January 2006 to May 2008) and benchmark the results against other similar published studies. The analysis was on the basis of KPIs for 1857 appendicectomies, which form a large volume of acute surgical presentations.ResultsOur results show significant improvement in length of stay (2.8 days, 2.6 days, P = 0.0001) and proportion of daytime operations (59.4%, 65.8%, P = 0.004), in keeping with other studies on benchmarking.ConclusionThe introduction of ASU has led to significant improvements in some KPIs for appendicectomy outcomes in the face of an increasing workload.© 2013 Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.

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