Overview
At the 2021 OR Manager Conference in Chicago, Hospital IQ hosted a roundtable with perioperative leaders, managers, and OR schedulers to discuss OR scheduling challenges. Participants in the roundtable session discussed ways that machine learning, AI, analytics, and automation can streamline the block management process and drive efficiency. These solutions provide real-time data to give surgeons accurate insights into available OR time and increase OR leaders’ understanding of performance, throughput bottlenecks, or reallocation recommendations. This results in improved decision making, increased OR utilization, and a shift towards systemness, or standardized operating practices across the organization.

Background
The traditional approach to managing the block schedule is inefficient. Hospitals struggle to provide transparency into available OR time. Surgeons with allocated block often hold time they don’t plan to use. Data to support analysis of utilization or reallocation discussions is dated, mistrusted, and difficult to acquire. All of this leads to suboptimal utilization rates. Today’s OR leaders are working to find solutions that resolve these common issues and create sustainable, scalable improvements to processes and utilization. In this whitepaper, learn more about the changes your peers are making to improve OR scheduling, block management, and utilization.