Operating Rooms
- Category: Uncategorised
- Published: Wednesday, January 01 2020 16:32
- Written by Super User
- Hits: 3876
Photo by JAFAR AHMED on Unsplash
Surgery is dependent on a highly complex set of facilities, people, schedules, environments and procedures. To analyze it all as an interconnected system is daunting, which is why most consulting organizations (including the big ones) don’t do it.
We understand the nature of the interrelationships between the OR, supply chain, facilities, sterile processing, logistics, purchasing, surgeons and block allocations and have found that it is in these interrelationships where the most value can be added.
We worked on a major medical center in the southern USA, with a remit to optimize the operating room. After detailed analysis, it quickly became clear that there were multiple difficulties at all levels of the system, but we concentrated on three:
-
Turnaround time in the OR units.
-
Case cart preparation, deployment and tear down
-
Inventory deployment and supply chain optimization
By treating these issues as interconnected elements in a system, we reduced turnaround time significantly, released technician capacity in preparation and tear down of case carts resulting in vastly decreased overtime, changed the system of preference card setup and maintenance to reduce errors and increased surgeon satisfaction in a highly competitive local market for their services.
OR time is arguably the most valuable resource a hospital has. It’s certainly the most valuable resource a consulting surgeon has, yet system level inefficiencies consume that time in non productive ways. We have a deep understanding of those issues, and have proven countermeasures and methodological systems improvements which can release that capacity to increase patient load, surgical outcomes and profit.