To the Editor Health care researchers have the difficulty of balancing statistical and clinical significance when publishing research findings. Throughout the JAMA Surgery Practical Guide to Surgical Data Sets series,¹ many articles conveyed the concern that large data set analyses can produce statistically but not clinically significant results. This possibility requires the researcher and reader to make a judgement on the value of the information discovered in the study. However, it seems that authors more frequently take a clinician or cost perspective rather than consider the patient experience.

In the JAMA Surgery series, one article² included a statistically significant outcome that improved patient length of stay by 0.1 days, approximately 2.4 hours, but was deemed 鈥減ractically meaningless.鈥� We disagree with this rationale. As one of the driving profits in a hospital, the operating room generates an average of $36 to $37 per minute.³ When the operating room is delayed because of no available beds in the recovery room because patients are not being transitioned to the floor because patients are not being discharged, a 2.4-hour delay in discharge can cause major logjams in patient flow and resultant increased costs. For a typical, busy hospital running near maximum capacity, this loss may be staggering.