“It’s highly inefficient for me to do surgeries here. We can’t ever seem to start on time.”  

 

Complaints around the efficiency and timing of surgery is a symptom of a more complex root cause and may indicate a need for a surgical optimization program based on well-founded concepts.  

 

Some benefits include but are not limited to:

1) less chaos and workarounds for nursing and other caregivers 

2) less waiting for surgeons 

3) more predictability for patients and family to coordinate personal needs related to the surgery

4) and more capacity and potential throughput for the hospital with lower costs

 

What techniques have you found useful to optimize surgical flow?

3 Responses

  1. In my surgical optimization career, I have learned there is alignment in seemingly misaligned stakeholder priorities. Finding that alignment helps to increase the strides of improvements.

  2. I remember how inefficient the discharge process is. Between this and the delays in the EDs, patients discharging on time seems to be a major issue! Do any of you have any potential solutions for this?

  3. Its painful to watch healthcare go through the same lessons as manufacturing did in the early days. I have come across too many false starts and horror stories.

    5S is an all too familiar example of this. Teams spend a tremendous amount of effort sorting their areas. Without set, standarize and sustain to leverage the gains, the problem returns in a week. Its demoralizing to the team, yet the need for 5S remains. Equipment remains hard to find, out of reach and often broken! Without the right, operational equipment, we staff working too hard, delays in surgery and undesireable work arounds.

    The surgical assessment and optimization identifies these gaps and gives a path forward without having to learn the hard way.

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