Unlocking Your ORs' Potential: Lexington Medical Center Deploys Data-Driven Strategies for Maximizing Efficiency, Easing Staff Challenges, and Achieving a 6% Increase in Block Utilization

Speakers

OR Impact Story 2_Jay_Hamm_Lexington-min
Jay Hamm, RN, FACHE
Vice President, Operations, Lexington Medical Center
OR Impact Story 2_Tim_Fitzgerald_Lexington-min
Timothy Fitzgerald, MHA, FACHE
Assistant Vice President, Perioperative Services, Lexington Medical Center
OR Impact Story 2_Karen_Tisdale_Lexington-min
Karen Tisdale
Manager, Performance Analytics Lexington Medical Center

Summary

Hospitals and health systems today face unprecedented challenges, such as staffing shortages and increasing demand for treatment, with fewer resources available. Perioperative leaders are struggling to balance available resources like staffing and equipment with the demand for additional operating room time. Furthermore, low block utilization, lack of visibility into open OR time, and mistrust in operational data are compounding challenges and making it difficult to achieve strategic initiatives.

To unlock the full potential of operating rooms, transform perioperative operations, and achieve sustainable results, organizations are increasingly leveraging the power of predictive and prescriptive analytics to access real-time data and make better-informed operational decisions. The South Carolina-based Lexington Medical Center’s Vice President of Operations, Assistant Vice President of Perioperative Service, and Manager of Performance Analytics have embarked on a journey to address universal perioperative operational challenges. By adopting data-driven strategies, made possible by LeanTaaS AI-driven iQueue for Operating Rooms, they have been able to break through historical barriers of low block utilization and lack of open OR time and to notably do more with less. 

In this discussion, the Lexington Medical Center’s team shares their journey and insights on how they achieved impressive results, such as optimizing staffing and increasing OR utilization through surgeon engagement and collaboration. Join us to learn about Lexington Medical Center’s journey to date, and where they are headed next.

Viewers of this webinar will be able to: 

  • Explain the challenges that present when perioperative leaders lack access to visible, credible data during the operation decision-making process
  • Understand the value of adopting a culture of data-driven decision making in the perioperative setting
  • Describe how perioperative leaders are leveraging predictive and prescriptive analytics to reduce staffing challenge

Results

6% Increase in block utilization
4%Increase in prime time utilization
8%Increase in robot utilization
210%Increase in released minutes
iQueue for Operating Rooms helped us make tough decisions around block time allocation…as well as moving a significant amount of volume to our outpatient surgery centers. What has been especially encouraging has been the change in culture… our practice leaders and surgeons are owning the improvement of OR block utilization and improved use of resources.
Timothy Fitzgerald MHA, FACHE
Assistant Vice President, Perioperative Services, Lexington Medical Center

Related resources

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Chapter 1: The Looming Challenge

If you work in the healthcare industry, or even if you’re just an interested observer, you don’t need a book to tell you that the financial pressure is on as never before. A perfect storm of circumstances is swirling together, one that will make survivability, not to mention profitability, a greater challenge for healthcare companies than we’ve seen in the modern era.

As with banks, retailers, and airlines, which had to rapidly enhance their brick-and-mortar footprints with robust online business models—it is the early movers eager to gain new efficiencies that will thrive and gain market share. The slow-to-move and the inefficient will end up being consolidated into larger health systems seeking to expand their geographical footprints.

The pressures on healthcare

Let’s look at just a few of the looming challenges healthcare must meet head-on.

An aging population

By the year 2030, the number of adults sixty-five years of age or older will exceed the number of children eighteen years or younger in the United States. We are living longer than our parents did. Positive news for sure, but problematic for several reasons.

The older we get, the more medical help we need. Older people have more chronic diseases. By 2025, nearly 50 percent of the population will suffer from one or more chronic diseases that will require ongoing medical intervention. This combination of an aging population and an increase in chronic diseases will create a ballooning demand for healthcare services.