Decision on SIG-2026-0360

[MSOM Conference]

08-May-2026

Re: SIG-2026-0360, "The Impact of Travel Nurse Participation in Surgical Operations"

SIG Day Decision: Reject

Dear Author (this is to ensure anonymity):

We received many excellent submissions for the Healthcare Operations Management SIG-Day Conference. Unfortunately, we were unable to accept all of them to be included in the program, and we are sorry to say that your paper was not accepted to the SIG-Day conference.

If you also submitted an extended abstract of your paper to the main MSOM Conference, a decision on that submission will come separately.


Sincerely,

Healthcare Operations;SIG Co-Chairs

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Referee: 1
Please summarize the paper briefly. - Rev: This paper examines how travel scrub nurse participation affects OR throughput and process flow, using case-level data from ~237,000 surgeries linked to HR contract records at a large academic medical center. The authors instrument travel nurse participation with lagged state-level RN licensing approvals to address endogenous staffing assignment. Travel scrub participation increases surgical case lengths by 7–8% (~10 minutes on a two-hour case), with larger effects in equipment-intensive specialties (orthopedics, neurosurgery) and planned/elective settings, and smaller effects in emergency cases. Additional analyses reveal effects on first-case start delays and between-case transitions, and show that scrub continuity and accumulated institutional familiarity can partially mitigate the disruption. The main contribution is procedure-level evidence on the cost-flexibility tradeoff of temporary nursing labor in surgical operations, a setting where prior work has largely focused on unit-level staffing and quality outcomes.

Referee: 2
Please summarize the paper briefly. - Rev: Please see the pdf attached-


Referee: 1

Comments to the Author (old)
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Referee: 2

Comments to the Author (old)
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