Reference no: EM132355349

Case Study

Improving Block Time Utilization to Increase Operating Room Efficiency

You are the Perioperative Director at Shady Hill Medical Center. Your busy surgeons have acquired block time. This is reserved time for the surgeons to post their cases, making their lives easier by standardizing their work time which is considered a privilege.

You have noticed that there is a substantial underutilization of block time in your operating rooms. Therefore, you decide to meet with the Chief of Surgery and various surgical division chiefs, as well as major contributing surgeons, to go over the problem. You bring data and conclude that operating rooms, large numbers of staff, and anesthesia doctors are sitting by idly when no surgery is being preformed. There are rules in place for block times; however, most of the busier surgeons have figured out how to circumvent the system and avoid following the criteria for block time.

After looking at reports, you realized that half of the surgeons with block time are using up to and more than 70% of their allotted time, which is considered good utilization; a quarter of the surgeons are only using it 50% of the time; and the remaining 25% have extremely low utilization.It is also come to your attention that a majority of the surgeons are able to keep their block time until 72 hours before the date of surgery, thus making it extremely difficult to fill these unscheduled rooms. The time that a surgeon has before the operating room is released is known as "release time". Release time can be as short as 24 hours or as long as several weeks. Surgeons who have an elective practice such as plastic, ophthalmology or orthopedic surgery should be relatively long release times, whereas surgeons with acute practices may need shorter release periods so they can place their urgent cases in the operating room quickly.

In order to improve operating room efficiency, you along with the surgeons, nursing and anesthesia need to develop a plan that will reward surgeons who have appropriate utilization, allow operating rooms to be released in enough time that they can be backfilled by other busy surgeons, and allow appropriate staffing by both nursing and anesthesia. It is imperative to revise the policies for granting block time, maintaining block time, and assigning appropriate release time.

2. What should the parameters be for granting block time to surgeons in your institution?

3. What criteria should be specified for utilization of block time?

4. Devise a system that can be used to monitor the use of block time. Be sure to take into account holidays and vacation and to develop a mechanism to reallocate a surgeon's block time when it is not being utilized at an adequate level.

5. Are there ways to provide incentives to the surgeons' office staff to get them to assist in assuring that these problems are addressed? What are your suggestions?

6. Set up a system that can give surgeons appropriate release times. Is it appropriate to disregard the rules if a surgeon constantly utilizes his block time?

7. Devise a system that can give accurate reports on utilization and a system that can change either block time or release time when utilization is not adequate.