Editor's Note A paper published March 29 in the journal Bioengineering examines the growing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into hospital and healthcare systems and the way in which it is augmenting clinical decision-making, optimizing hospital operation and management, improving medical image analysis, and transforming patient care and monitoring through…

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Next-Gen Disruptors: Technologies Transforming the OR Installment #1, presented by LeanTaaS Surgical procedures are necessary steps in patient journeys—no one wants to have surgery, but most people will need it at some point for care continuity and better quality of life. To best support positive outcomes, optimal recovery periods, and…

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This past February, the OR Business Management Conference, held in Phoenix, Arizona, brought together business managers of all walks of life. The intimate event was once again a symbiotic blend between financial- and business-centric education and high-quality networking. The education offered for seasoned and new business leaders alike, perhaps more…

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Editor's Note Billing, records, appointment scheduling and other systems at Lurie Children’s Hospital were still offline a week after representatives of had to cancel a planned OR Business Management Conference presentation due to a cyberattack. According to a February 12 report from the Chicago Sun-Times, the January 31 cyberattack is…

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In every OR, the complicated dance of surgical care coordination—the series of handoffs between stakeholders throughout the surgery lifecycle—is performed mainly in the background. Those stakeholders include physician offices, schedulers, preadmission testing, insurance verification, vendors, sterile processing, supply chain, anesthesia, and surgical staff. But what does it look like when…

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Most hospitals agree that they can better harness the data they are collecting from registration through discharge in order to streamline patient turnovers, reduce wait times, and improve patient and staff satisfaction, but there is still uncertainty about how best to turn massive quantities of data into better patient outcomes.…

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ORs are a key revenue driver for hospitals, with surgical services accounting for nearly half of hospital margins. Efficient use of OR time is therefore critical to sustaining and growing hospital revenue and profitability. Perioperative leaders face an ongoing challenge in optimizing OR utilization, however, because of the common mindset…

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The healthcare industry as a whole has faced numerous and unprecedented challenges in the last few years. With each challenge compounded by external pressures, these proverbial spotlights illuminated existing vulnerabilities. The healthcare workforce, particularly nursing, continues to be one of the most impactful vulnerabilities. With the pandemic acting as a…

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The OR is the financial motor of a hospital. As such, inefficiencies in this space adversely impact patient safety as well as the financial stability of the hospital and/or healthcare system. The first case on-time starts (FCOTS) metric is one of the primary benchmarks for assessing OR efficiency. The following…

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The surgical department often deals with challenges like underused block time, inefficient scheduling, limited data, and unpredictable demand. They also struggle to match staff skills to service needs. LeanTaaS and its software help to tackle these issues by using lean principles, predictive analytics, and machine learning. The LeanTaaS solutions are…

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