OR Business Performance is a new series intended to help OR managers and directors improve the success of their business.   Imagine that you were recently hired as director of perioperative services at a 450-bed hospital with 18 operating rooms. Now, 6 months into your tenure, it’s time for your…

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Shortening the time it takes for an outpatient procedure may increase volume, OR utilization, and hence revenue—but that is not the point, say the nation’s top performers in a recent survey of procedure times. Rather, the purpose is to enhance patient safety and satisfaction. For example, less time in the…

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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…

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A protocol using color-coded zones has yielded a more thorough, efficient cleaning process for one 17-room OR. The OR leaders knew they had to step up cleaning as part of an effort to reduce surgical site infection (SSI) rates and to accomplish between-case cleaning more systematically. The answer: Divide each…

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Perioperative managers and staffs are collecting data on a growing list of metrics on surgical quality—antibiotic prophylaxis, venous thromboembolism prevention, normothermia, and more. Now these and other metrics are coming into play as big companies like Walmart, Lowe’s, and Pepsico seek the best value for their insured employees, especially those…

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Do you know who your competitors for surgical volume are going to be? It may not be the hospital or surgery center down the street or even across town. Your competitor could be in the next state or even across the country, at least for some types of surgery. Big…

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One would think that reducing surgical complications would lower a hospital’s costs in addition to being the right thing to do. But the hospital’s bottom line can be seriously affected. The loss can be substantial unless new surgical volume is added to make up for the loss, a new analysis…

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A new study in the journal Health Affairs of total knee replacement (TKR) confirms that wide variations in care exist among hospitals based on factors such as geographic location. The High Value Healthcare Collaborative found significant variations in TKR among the 5 participating health care systems. Among these were length…

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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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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…

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