As a perioperative business manager for almost a decade, I’ve seen dozens of operating room efficiency improvement projects and benchmarks that focus heavily on first case delays and turnover times. On the surface, that makes sense; if the first case doesn’t start on time, it has a snowball effect on the rest of the… Read More
In a previous article, I talked about how higher “velocity” contributes to greater efficiencies in a healthcare operations setting. The key to increasing velocity is to focus on minimizing the non value-added time before attempting to improve the value-added time. It’s a bit like the video game Tetris. Almost every asset, machine or human, in… Read More
The notion of improving operational efficiency is conspicuously absent from the healthcare debate — neither Obamacare nor the newly proposed GOP plan discusses the impact that a step-function improvement in efficiency could have on access to healthcare (through more capacity), quality of healthcare services (through reduced wait times for patients) or cost (through better utilization… Read More
I think we can safely add “travel agent” to the list of anachronisms that have gradually receded from our collective consciousness. Along with pay phones, and at some point in the future, brick-and-mortar retail stores. One needn’t look far to see the humble travel agent’s replacement: hundreds of websites and mobile applications from which one… Read More
A recent RNnetwork survey found half of the nurses they surveyed (49.8 percent) have contemplated switching professions, with 27 percent citing overwork as the reason. In his analysis of this data (as reported by Kelly Gooch on Becker’s Hospital Review), RNnetwork President Eric Darienzo offered six ways healthcare organizations can create a nurse-friendly culture including… Read More
While reimbursement requirements are a major driver of this focus, reducing LOS can also decrease the number of hospital-acquired conditions (HACs), which are subject to payment reductions of their own. Efforts to reduce LOS have led to a flurry of research into factors that impact LOS and how to address them. Due to the diversity… Read More
Hat tip to Sharon O’Keefe, CEO of the University of Chicago Medical Center, for introducing the phrase “make your assets sweat” to our team, which inspired me to write this article. The Affordable Care Act, increased government regulations and rising healthcare costs are forcing hospitals to do more with less. Last year, several major healthcare networks… Read More
It would be an understatement to say that 2016 was a year of unanticipated results. I expect 2017 will be another fascinating year for providers, patients, suppliers and payers. As president and CMO of LeanTaaS, I expect to have a front-row seat in partnership with the 30+ leading health systems we work with all over… Read More
One minute of utilized operating room (OR) time can be worth more than $70 in revenue and one minute of staffed OR time can cost $50 or more, making underutilized OR time a huge problem. Each year, roughly 51 million surgeries are performed in the 5,000+ hospitals and 5,000+ surgery centers in the U.S. MGMA… Read More
A common challenge with healthcare in general, and cancer care in particular, is the peaks and valleys in patient appointment scheduling, which often results in inefficient use of scarce and expensive resources, unpredictable wait times for patients and overtime hours for staff. Sanjeev Argawal, president and CMO of LeanTaaS Healthcare explains how data-science can optimize… Read More