How Healthcare Analytics Can Boost Operating Room Efficiency

Consider the following statistics from Becker's ASC Review:

• The total operating expenses per operating room (OR) is $1.2 million.
• 765 cases are performed per OR annually, with 4.6 cases per day.
• Median operating room time per patient encounter is 50.2 minutes. 

It should not be a surprise that many hospital ORs do not operate at the highest level of efficiency. Producing the desired outcomes with minimum waste of time, effort and skill is often the biggest challenge perioperative service areas face in the hospital. Surgeons, nurses and staff are busy tending to patients and have to coordinate with other physicians and clinicians to schedule time in the OR. Hospital administrators and leadership are often looking for ways to improve efficiency and increase revenue through their organization’s ORs. Just as healthcare analytics bring focused data to other areas of a healthcare organization, they can (and should), be applied to optimize performance in the OR.

Some healthcare providers utilize an OR dashboard to help identify areas for efficiency improvements in their OR and allow surgical teams to focus more fully on the patient. These dashboards help clinicians and administrators make more informed decisions on how to allocate resources, enhance communication between staff members and highlight OR-specific metrics including on-time case starts, room turnover time and block utilization.

For example, analytics tools can help operational leaders identify highest and lowest demand on staff by time of day, day of week and procedure. Those kinds of insights allow leadership to accurately gauge the staff needed throughout the week for optimal staffing leading to efficiency and bottom line savings.

Additional benefits of implementing healthcare analytics in an OR setting through a dashboard include: 

• Identification of important trends or problematic issues - for example, identification of expensive procedures or recurring documentation errors
• Enhanced utilization of limited OR resources to meet organization efficiency objectives
• Interactive, visually-rich display of key performance metrics (KPIs) - these help to engage executive leadership who are often essential for authorizing OR budgetary initiatives
• Access to detailed data on efficiency, utilization, costs and surgeon performance - this can have far reaching benefits by illuminating potential areas of improvement
• Rapid identification of problems to spur immediate action
• Graphic display of important items such as key safety steps for perioperative care
• Continuous monitoring of OR utilization which allows for on-the-fly adjustments to resource allocation
• Easy access to comprehensive data from multiple systems allowing for reporting across various functional areas of the hospital which can be affected by or have an effect on the OR
• Identification of missing OR equipment and supplies
• Optimized block allocation 
• Monitoring of safety and patient satisfaction data by surgeon, specialty and facility
• Identification of bottlenecks and backlogs
• Objective insights into overall system performance
  
• Efficiency improvements achieved through transparency, accountability and validation

Learn More

At Syntrix Consulting, our Epic certified developers, analytics and business intelligence architects can help you devise optimal models to support your healthcare dashboard and business analytics solutions in the OR and other areas in your healthcare organization. Our proprietary healthcare business intelligence system, Smart Medtrix™, offers pre-built healthcare dashboards that let you start analyzing your clinical and financial operations without delay. We help you keep an eye on the big picture while focusing on what matters most. Contact us today for a free initial consultation.