The week between Christmas and New Year's has traditionally been a very popular time for patients to schedule non-urgent procedures. Teachers and students are on break, patients who've met their deductibles for the year are scrambling to get in under the wire and there's built-in time to recover. A quirk in the calendar fueled the surge for demand in surgery this year: Both Christmas and New Year's Day fell on a Friday, creating long weekends, all the better for patients to recover from minor surgery without burning personal days at work.

For orthopedic surgeon David Geier Jr., MD, the curtain closed too quickly on 2009. On his drive home from the Medical University of South Carolina on New Year's Eve, he was wishing that the operating rooms weren't open only a half-day.

"I had a bunch more people that would have done their surgery today," says Dr. Geier, director of sports medicine at MUSC, who did get 3 cases in on this day. "We've just been packing them in this month. I've been taking OR time from other people who weren't using theirs."

The Surgery Center of San Buenaventura (Calif.) is coming off its busiest month in a couple years, even with the holidays bringing shorter weeks. The 2-OR ASC that's open Tuesday to Friday topped 200 cases last month for the first time in a long time. A normal month is 178. Administrator Chris Behm, BSN, RN, CLNC, CASC, saw a surge in children getting tonsils and tubes. "They have 2 weeks to recover and won't miss any school," she says.

Ms. Behm also points to the improving economy as a factor in her center's end-of-year blitz.

"Everybody was so anxious last year about the economy," she says. "Even when they knew it was inevitable that they were going to have surgery, people were putting things off because the economy was so scary. Obviously, money is an issue. If you've met your $2,000 deductible and you need surgery anyway, you certainly want it by the end of the year. But it wasn't just the out-of-pocket expense, but people not knowing what would happen to their jobs if they took 2 weeks off recovering."

ENT surgeon Jay Klarsfeld, MD, says December was a record-setting month for his Ridgefield (Conn.) Surgery Center. On Dec. 30, he says, 5 cases were added to the New Year's Eve schedule. "All we heard was, "?Can I have surgery before the 31st?' A lot of people want everything done before their deductible starts up again."

From all of us here at Outpatient Surgery Magazine to you, may all your months in 2010 be like crazy-busy Decembers.