Tag: Productivity

From NASA to the OR: How to launch on-time starts

Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital, located in Lake Forest, Illinois, has taken a giant leap in curtailing late starts in the OR. In December 2016, the facility’s on-time start percentage was only 37%. Perioperative team members dug in their heels and, by August 2017, increased their on-time starts to 77%.…

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By: Catherine Spader, RN
May 17, 2019
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How will artificial intelligence impact surgical patient care? Part 1

Artificial intelligence (AI) may be coming to your OR sooner than you think. AI is already being used to identify areas needing quality improvement by analyzing surgical workflow, communication patterns, and errors that went unnoticed during a procedure. OR leaders need to understand AI and participate in its development and…

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By: Cynthia Saver, MS, RN
April 22, 2019
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New technology and workflow lead to surgical volume growth

Sarasota Memorial Health Care System (SMH) in Sarasota, Florida, is a Level 2 trauma center with 839 beds and more than 900 physicians. The 430 members of the surgical staff perform more than 24,300 inpatient and outpatient surgical procedures in the 34 operating suites each year. With this level of…

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By: OR Manager
April 22, 2019
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Operative volume is essential quality indicator for performing emergent general surgery in elderly

Editor's Note In this study, survival rates for geriatric patients were significantly improved when emergency general surgery procedures were performed at hospitals with higher operative volumes. Of 41,860 surgical procedures evaluated at 200 hospitals, mortality decreased as hospital emergency operative volume increased. For every standardized increase in volume, reduction in…

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By: Judy Mathias
April 18, 2019
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'Coming clean' in the SPD requires collaboration and competency—Part 1

Contaminated surgical instruments made ECRI Institute’s 2019 annual top 10 list of health technology hazards, coming in at number five: “Mishandling flexible endoscopes after disinfection can lead to patient infections.” Number two on the list in 2018 was “Endoscope reprocessing failures continue to expose patients to infection risk.” It’s not…

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By: Cynthia Saver, MS, RN
March 15, 2019
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Study: Outcomes with overlapping surgery

Editor's Note This study from a large academic medical center finds that the practice of overlapping surgery does not expose patients to increased risk of negative outcomes. Data on operative procedures from January 1, 2014 to December 31, 2015 at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, were used to compare…

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By: Judy Mathias
February 11, 2019
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Policy compliance essential for overlapping surgery safety

Flipping rooms, or running two ORs back to back, is common in many perioperative services departments. Certain rules of thumb can help ensure efficiency and good outcomes, but sometimes those rules either don’t exist or are unclear. Does your facility have guidelines for overlapping surgery, and do your surgical teams…

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By: Elizabeth Wood
December 13, 2018
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New structure puts SPD staff on firmer footing

Perioperative leaders, including those in the sterile processing department (SPD), need to know when to make sweeping—not just incremental—changes to improve workflow and optimize the talents of their staff. Sometimes gains in productivity and staff satisfaction depend not only on identifying process improvements but also on placing staff in areas…

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By: Cynthia Saver, MS, RN
December 13, 2018
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Block schedule best practices: Calculate, allocate, and regulate

A common strategy for managing OR utilization is block scheduling: Assigning surgical time to individual surgeons or surgeon groups based on their volume. But what sounds like a simple process is often complicated by the potential for dissatisfaction and reduced utilization. Yet done effectively, block scheduling can significantly boost the…

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By: Cynthia Saver, MS, RN
November 14, 2018
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Room utilization rises with dynamic block scheduling

Inefficiencies in surgical case scheduling can lead to large revenue losses. When leaders at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center (SHMC) in Spokane, Washington, realized poor room utilization was the cause of more than $1 million in annual overtime costs, they knew that better planning was needed. “For every 60 minutes…

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By: Cynthia Saver, MS, RN
November 14, 2018
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