- ‘Intelligent OR’ taps technology for patient and material logistics
- Editorial
- Speaker offers help for relighting your lost spark
- Time Busters: A Lean team tackles OR turnover
- Restructuring circulator nurse role aids turnover
- Visual cues help to improve the turnover process
- RTLS yields new data for managing patient logistics
- Thinking about wireless systems? Consider these tips from an expert
- Lean boosts OR morale, productivity
- Workflow support in new Johns Hopkins ORs
- A safer, faster way for postoperative x-rays
- Tackling perioperative supply chain as a system
- New consensus statement for cardiac cath labs
- Medicare rules allow broader use of nonphysicians
- CMS expert offers advice on ASC quality reporting
'Intelligent OR' taps technology for patient and material logistics
Three ambulances are headed for the hospital with victims of a multivehicle accident. A fourth ambulance is also en route carrying a 52-year-old man with chest pain. Calls come in from the EMS team, which begins streaming real-time vital signs and diagnostic information to the ED. Realizing multiple critically injured…
Editorial
There are good reasons to think about how patients experience your OR and your facility. It isn’t about private rooms and better food. The quality of their experience is fundamental to keeping patients safe. A new analysis from HealthGrades finds hospitals with the highest ratings for nurse and physician communications…
Speaker offers help for relighting your lost spark
Is your spark flickering? Maybe it’s dimmed in the face of the endless reports, e-mails, and urgent meetings you face every week. The to-do list seems endless. Next week’s priorities are overtaking this week’s, and they all seem to be in the wrong order. Connie Merritt, BSN, RN, PHN, is…
Time Busters: A Lean team tackles OR turnover
First of 3 articles on applying Lean management to turnover time. Sinai Hospital of Baltimore faced a challenge. The block schedule was maxed out, even though new ORs had been added. There was a need to eke out every available minute. Despite efforts to improve turnover time, it had plateaued…
Restructuring circulator nurse role aids turnover
Second of 3 articles on applying Lean management to turnover time. Efforts to weed waste from turnover time quickly took root in one 10-OR department. Within about a month after OR staff and certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs) embraced the new process, turnover time decreased from about 26 minutes…
Visual cues help to improve the turnover process
Third of 3 articles on applying Lean management to turnover time. Creating a “visual workplace” is a principle in Lean management. Visual cues have been one solution for improving turnover time at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. In a visual workplace, the goal is to make waste, problems,…
RTLS yields new data for managing patient logistics
A patient arrives for surgery. As soon as she checks in, she receives a wristband with a small locator tag that monitors her progress as she moves through the surgical process. Behind the scenes, the tag is signaling the surgical department’s real-time locating system (RTLS), which sends notices to OR…
Thinking about wireless systems? Consider these tips from an expert
Are you considering wireless technology for tracking patients, staff, equipment, or supplies? Expert tips are offered by Rick Hampton, wireless communications manager for Partners Healthcare. The Boston-based network includes Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General, and affiliated facilities. Many hospitals are weighing decisions about these technologies, which include RTLS (real-time…
Lean boosts OR morale, productivity
Lean management in a teaching hospital’s otolaryngology OR improved efficiency, morale, and finances in a study from the University of Michigan (U-M), Ann Arbor. After 18 months: • turnover time (from exit of one patient to arrival of the next) fell by nearly one-third to 29 minutes • turnaround time…
Workflow support in new Johns Hopkins ORs
Staff in the cardiovascular OR area of the new Sheikh Zayed clinical tower at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore will be able to locate certain equipment via computer and use a Skype-like camera system to share images of instruments and supplies with the sterile core and sterile processing unit.…
A safer, faster way for postoperative x-rays
With patient safety as its primary goal, the University of Michigan Health System has created a new process using bar-coded sponges and electronic radiology orders to ensure no items are unintentionally left in a patient during surgery. Electronic orders provide for a standardized process that not only is safer but…
Tackling perioperative supply chain as a system
A systemwide focus on supply chain management is helping Sutter Health, a large, Sacramento, California-based health system, to improve its financial performance by adopting best practices and taking a contemporary approach to strategic sourcing, value analysis, and logistical support. The target: Trim $200 million from expenses by 2012, and they’re…
New consensus statement for cardiac cath labs
For the first time, cardiac catheterization laboratory personnel have a document defining best practices, including time-outs, infection prevention, and preprocedure checklists. The statement, from The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI), issued in March 2012, is the first to represent consensus on the operation of cath labs, the lead…
Medicare rules allow broader use of nonphysicians
Hospitals now have the flexibility under federal law to include practitioners other than physicians on their medical staffs. That’s one provision of Medicare’s revised Conditions of Participation (COP) for hospitals and critical access hospitals, which take effect July 16, 2012. The revision is the first major overhaul of the COPs…
CMS expert offers advice on ASC quality reporting
With the early issuance of quality reporting codes for Medicare, both ambulatory surgery centers (ASC) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have a chance to develop expertise in their use and to resolve any technical problems before the mandatory start date of October 1, 2012. And that…
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