Problem
To support their growth targets and attract and maintain employed and community surgeons within a competitive market, Baptist Health wanted to streamline their OR scheduling process. There were multiple challenges and inefficiencies, including:
- Different processes and booking forms were used for submitting case information across the entire health system, making it challenging for clinics scheduling for surgeons that performed cases at the various Hospitals. Additionally, it was impractical to flex OR scheduling staff due to the disparate workflows at each site.
- Multiple communication channels to submit case information required OR schedulers to manage phone calls, faxes and emails to post cases and ensure that nothing would fall
through the cracks. - High call volumes and wait times led clinics to schedule as many cases as possible when they would reach OR scheduling. This resulted in long handle times and a high abandoned call rate.
- Omitted or inaccurate information required the OR schedulers to conduct additional follow up calls before they could post a case.
- Missing faxes and errors led to finger pointing and delays in posted cases.
Solution
Baptist Health partnered with the LeanTaaS iQueue for Operating Rooms product team to develop an electronic case scheduling system, Schedule, to provide a:
- Single source of information where Baptist Health’s employed and community-based clinic schedulers have visibility into the OR schedule. They can request OR time and submit case information for elective cases for both in-block and open-time cases, significantly reducing the need for inquiry phone calls and allowing clinic schedulers to submit case information when convenient for them.
- Streamlined system with all required information for OR schedulers to work efficiently and avoid errors.
- Standardized process across the system allowing easy flexing of OR scheduling staff to support other hospitals when needed.
- Credible audit trail with no more lost faxes or missing information.
- Tool to facilitate workload balance for the OR schedulers to maximize throughput and increase employee satisfaction
Results
From May to June 2021:
Additionally, when COVID surged in July, Baptist Health optimized the rescheduling process in iQueue to enable clinic schedulers to make minor updates to existing posted cases instead of creating an entirely new case submission and efficiently utilize iQueue to share up-to-date information on their surgeon’s backlog. Operational leadership now had direct visibility into case backlogs stored in iQueue, allowing them to make decisions on temporary changes to the surgery schedule and surgeon blocks to address backlogs effectively to maximize utilization.
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