Development of a Surgical Capacity Index: Opportunities for Assessment and Improvement

Significant gaps exist in the provision of surgical care in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The purpose of this study was to develop a metric to monitor surgical capacity in LMICs.

There were data from 10 hospitals in Sierra Leone, 16 hospitals in Liberia, and 9 hospitals in the Solomon Islands. The levels of surgical capacity were created using our scoring index based on a possible 100 points: level 1 for hospitals with <50 points, level 2 with 50–70 points, level 3 with 70–80 points, and level 4 with >80 points. In Sierra Leone, 44% of the hospitals had a surgical capacity rating of level 1, 50% level 2, and 10% level 3. In Liberia, 37.5% of the hospitals had a surgical capacity rating of level 1, 56.3% level 2, and only one hospital level 3. For Sierra Leone and Liberia, two factors—infrastructure and personnel—had the greatest deficits. In the Solomon Islands, 44.4% of the hospitals had their surgical capacity rated at level 1, 22.2% at level 2, 11.1% at level 3, and 22.2% at level 4.

Pending pilot testing for reliability and validity, it appears that a systematic hospital surgical capacity index can identify areas for improvement and provide an objective measure for monitoring changes over time.