[When everything is well-coordinated in an interdisciplinary manner-Is there a need for operating room management?].

Even in the ideal case of well-coordinated cooperation between anesthesiological and surgical as well as interventional colleagues, a departmental control unit is required to undertake the management of the central surgical unit. Conflict management and the communication of decisions represent only one part of the range of tasks of operating room (OR) management. In contrast, strategic planning, control of higher level patient flows within the entire hospital, capacity and personnel planning and the increasingly important quality management are the core competencies of a good OR manager. Where in the past the routine problems of the planning surgeon had to be fought out between professions and between hierarchies and always solved in a new way, nowadays there should be an OR statute, which ideally must be transparently implemented and openly communicated by the OR management.