Pain and patient experience: A business partnership
Managing patients’ pain is no longer just a clinical goal—it’s a business necessity. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has started incorporating value-based purchasing (VBP) scores, which include customer satisfaction, into hospital reimbursement payments. Of the total VBP score, 30% comes from results from the Hospital Consumer Assessment…
Efficiency soars in wake of strategic OR cultural changes
Changes in staff responsibilities and greater collaboration have contributed to dramatically improved first-case on-time starts at the University of Louisville Hospital, Louisville, Kentucky—from about 35% to 86% in a little over a year. Turnover time has been reduced, too, with slow but steady progress suggesting that revamping existing structures can…
Surgical growth hinges on good service line information
OR Business Performance is a series intended to help OR managers and directors improve the success of their business. Does your hospital’s CEO expect you to grow surgical volume in the upcoming fiscal year? Hospitals have always depended on surgical services to drive revenue and profit. Today, in the…
Starting in the office to improve postop outcomes
OR teams are accustomed to using checklists to keep patients safe during surgery. Could extending presurgical checklists to the physician’s office or clinic produce even better results? The new Strong for Surgery initiative in Washington State is introducing checklists into offices and clinics to help address issues like nutrition, glycemic…
Benchmarking labor productivity: How is your OR being compared?
Productivity monitoring and management are near the top of the priority list for every perioperative nursing director. With 50% to 80% of a hospital’s costs in labor, staffing dollars are a big target for cost management. Some experts say hospitals and health systems will face budget cuts of 20% to…
Simulation study supports use of crisis checklists
Surgical checklists have gained traction in recent years as studies have shown that they improve patient safety. Using surgical crisis checklists might be the next logical step, judging by a recent simulation study. OR staff missed just 6% of life-saving steps when using crisis checklists, but when staff relied on…
A plan for avoiding readmissions after surgery
A Medicaid patient is admitted to the hospital for repair of an enterocutaneous fistula. He’s considered a high risk for readmission after surgery because he doesn’t have a working refrigerator or telephone. That means he won’t be able to keep fresh food on hand or call his physician if he…
Joint project targets prevention for colorectal surgical infections
Seven hospitals working with the Joint Commission and the American College of Surgeons (ACS) on a 2-year project to reduce colorectal surgical site infections (SSIs) have saved more than $3.7 million by avoiding an estimated 135 SSIs, the commission announced in November 2012. The commission is pilot testing the approach…
OR debriefings put the safety checklist ‘on steroids’
See it, say it, fix it. That saying by a former FedEx pilot set the stage for a major quality improvement effort in surgical services at a South Carolina medical center. A key QI tool is debriefings performed at the end of every case. These quick exchanges help to bring…
Tying anesthesia salaries to on-time starts, turnovers
Better data coupled with an at-risk salary model for anesthesiologists have helped one academic medical center to improve its performance for on-time starts and turnover time between cases. The hospital’s surgical volume was growing, and it had to make the most of its OR time. Yet a lot of the…
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