Can we improve operating room efficiency?

Using Lean strategies to improve operating room efficiency.

Enterprise-wide patient scheduling information systems to coordinate surgical clinic and operating room scheduling can impair operating room efficiency.

A s revenues have decreased, health care systems have instituted intensive cost reduction programs, such as the use of pharmaceutical practice guidelines, to attempt to maintain profitability. After implementing such initiatives, some health care systems are having difficulty in further decreasing costs without sacrificing customer (patient) service. The next generation of process improvement e...

Length of stay following elective surgery--can we improve efficiency?

Increasing emergency admissions place significant demands on limited hospital resources. We assessed national practices and resources for initiatives to reduce length of stay (LOS) and thereby improve efficiency of resource utilisation. Consultant members of the Irish Association of Coloproctology received a questionnaire seeking information about available initiatives aimed at reducing LOS. 20...

Increasing operating room efficiency through parallel processing.

OBJECTIVE Because of rising costs and shrinking reimbursements, hospitals must continually find ways to improve efficiency and productivity. This study attempts to increase caseloads in ambulatory surgery operating rooms while maintaining patient satisfaction and safety. SUMMARY BACKGROUND DATA In most hospitals, patients move through their operative day in a linear fashion, starting at regis...

Efficiency improvement in the operating room.

BACKGROUND In the changing health care environment, health systems, hospitals, and health care providers must focus on improving efficiency to meet an increasing demand for high-quality, low-cost health care. Much has been written about strategies and efforts to improve efficiency in the perioperative periods, yet the time when the patient is in the operating room-the intraoperative period-has ...