Recovering from COVID - Improving operating room capacity.

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Management
• Surgical Workflow Optimization
• Clinical Process Improvement

Background:

• The COVID-19 pandemic strained healthcare systems, necessitating strategies to mitigate high patient demands and optimize resource allocation.
• Reduced operating room capacity due to surgical case triaging impacted healthcare delivery.
• Re-activation of operating rooms required enhanced efficiency measures to address delayed and new surgical cases.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and implement a standardized best practice protocol for surgical prepping time.
• To evaluate the impact of this standardized protocol on operating room efficiency and capacity.

Main Methods:

• Utilized Adaptive Clinical Management (ACM) principles to optimize surgical prepping time.
• Identified high-performing surgeons ('positive deviants') through electronic medical record (EMR) data analysis.
• Developed and implemented a Clinical Standard Work (CSW) protocol based on identified best practices.
• Analyzed baseline and post-implementation data using statistical process control (SPC) charts.

Main Results:

• Average surgical prepping time reduced from 14.6 to 11.6 minutes for the team leader and 13.8 to 12.0 minutes for all surgeons.
• Monthly surgical case volume increased from 70 to 90 cases.
• Operating room end times improved, finishing an average of 20.8 minutes before the scheduled time.
• Surgical site infection rates remained stable at 0.1%, indicating no compromise in safety.

Conclusions:

• Implementation of a standardized surgical prepping protocol sustainably increased operating room efficiency and capacity.
• This approach effectively addressed pandemic-related burdens without negatively impacting quality, safety, or workload.
• The optimized workflow is projected to generate an additional $2-2.5 million in annual revenue.