Making the most of operational performance dashboards
Most hospitals use some form of performance dashboard to communicate with surgeons and hospital senior leadership. The dashboard is intended to show the efficiency of processes within the surgical suite. However, to be truly effective, the dashboard must provide accurate, reliable, and useful information. Does your dashboard do what you…
Surgeon sees standardization and data as keys to higher value healthcare
Over the past decade, the number of quality measurement programs has grown exponentially as hospitals respond to public and government demands for greater accountability and improved patient care. During this time, quality programs have been focused largely on how to do quality, how to measure it, how to improve it,…
Having more reliable performance data will boost your credibility
Most OR leaders use performance reports to inform and guide critical decisions. The problem is that in most hospitals, the data used to create these reports are not reliable. Why? Even the smallest surgery department is too complex for the most sophisticated OR data solution. To yield reliable reports, information…
Surgical growth hinges on good service line information
OR Business Performance is a series intended to help OR managers and directors improve the success of their business. Does your hospital’s CEO expect you to grow surgical volume in the upcoming fiscal year? Hospitals have always depended on surgical services to drive revenue and profit. Today, in the…
An electronic path for streamlining scheduling
An electronic form surgeons’ offices use to place scheduling orders has streamlined the preoperative process and sharply reduced case cancellations for a Chicago-area hospital. Cancellations are down from about 12% to less than 1% of cases since the scheduling form was introduced in early 2012. The offices took to the…
Hospitals share data to prevent colorectal SSIs
Why does our hospital have a higher rate of venous thromboembolism (VTE) than others in our state? How are others preventing surgical site infections (SSIs) after colorectal surgery? What’s behind our urinary tract infection (UTI) rate? Hospitals in Tennessee are openly discussing issues like these through the Tennessee Surgical Quality…
Meaningful use: What it means for ORs
Meaningful use is a much-used term in the push for electronic health records (EHRs). Eligible hospitals, critical access hospitals, and physicians can earn federal incentives for adopting and demonstrating "meaningful use" of certified EHR technology (sidebar). Your hospital's meaningful use discussions may be taking place away from the OR. But…
Benchmarking the OR's key indicators
Surgeons at St Vincent's Hospital in Bridgeport, Connecticut, were frustrated because the scheduled start times for their cases during the day seemed to vary a lot. Using their new dashboard, OR leaders were able to see that they were below the benchmark for scheduling accuracy. "We were not doing a…
OR dashboards: A useful tool for telling a story through data
Word has traveled to the executive suite that a high percentage of the OR's cases are starting late. There are also rumors of 1½ hour turnover times. As the manager, you know these don't reflect the OR's actual performance. How can you demonstrate that? One option is a dashboard that…
Data sparks on-time improvements
As with most busy ORs, we were looking to improve our efficiency. Consultants were brought in and gave recommendations, but it did not change our culture or improve our on-time starts. We had meetings with anesthesia providers, surgeons, and nurses. The results were differing opinions on the definition of an…
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