iQueue for Operating Rooms Case Study – Dignity Health

Dignity Health is the fifth-largest health system in the nation and the largest hospital provider in California. Its network of community hospitals spans California, Arizona, and Nevada and collectively includes over 250 operating rooms. Dignity Health’s Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City, California, is a 12 OR facility that serves the larger Peninsula community. As is true with many community hospitals, Sequoia’s surgeons are not directly employed by the hospital, and perform their surgeries across multiple facilities.

Sequoia Hospital partnered with LeanTaaS with the following operational challenges in mind:

Surgeons felt that it was hard to find time to schedule cases at Sequoia, and would take their volume elsewhere.

OR administration was unable to repurpose any poorly used block time.

Perioperative leadership lacked visibility into what was truly happening inside the ORs, and how well they were being utilized.

Sequoia Hospital partnered with LeanTaaS to deploy iQueue for Operating Rooms’ three modules across their 12 ORs.

The Exchange module has increased the total inventory of open time across the hospital and exposed that inventory to the broader surgeon population, allowing those looking for time to easily find it and bring more of their individual case volume to the hospital.

The Collect module has introduced a far more surgeon-centric way of thinking about how well block time is being used, and has helped OR administration re-purpose block time while leaving block owners enough time to meet their existing case volume. The methodology is now an established best practice for Sequoia Hospital’s block committee meetings.

The Analyze module has enhanced the visibility of key performance metrics in the OR, vastly improving the management team’s ability to monitor performance in a timely manner with credible data. It has also helped surgeons engage with their data, creating a culture of datadrivenness.