Success Stories

Baptist Medical Center South Increased OR Block Utilization by 11%

11 Percentage point increase in block utilization

8 Percentage point increase in prime time utilization

57 Percentage point decrease in abandoned blocks

25 Days average lead time for released time

Summary

Baptist Health is a nonprofit, mission-driven healthcare system in the greater Jacksonville, Florida area. The system comprises five Magnet-designated hospitals that include 74 operating rooms (ORs) and 14 endoscopy suites. Baptist Health Medical Center South, opened in 2005, includes 11 ORs and is consistently recognized both regionally and nationally for providing high-quality patient care.

Profile

5-hospital health system

74 ORs, 14 endoscopy suites

11 ORs in Baptist Health Medical Center South

Problem

When trying to grow by increasing access to Baptist Health Medical Center South’s existing ORs, surgical services leadership faced several challenges. First, the OR block schedule had limited open (first come, first served) time, making it challenging for surgeons who were not assigned block time or needed additional time to access the OR. Then when there was time open and available in the OR, there was no easy way to advertise the time to surgeons and their schedulers. Surgeon leadership at Baptist Health Medical Center South, when trying to reallocate block time, had difficulty making defensible decisions using traditional methods of measuring block utilization, even when they knew their decisions on assigning time were likely correct. Both surgeons and leadership at Baptist Health Medical Center South had limited visibility into operational metrics, acquiring reports often took a significant amount of manual work, and it was not easy for surgeons and leadership to see detailed data when desired.

Solution

To address these challenges, Baptist Health Jacksonville partnered with the LeanTaaS team to implement iQueue for Operating Rooms in Baptist Health Medical Center South’s 11 ORs. Baptist Health Medical Center South launched iQueue in October 2019, and soon realized the impact of the solution’s modules on improving surgical scheduling practices.

The iQueue Exchange module encouraged OR block owners to release time that they did not plan to use, and then advertise the newly open time using the “OpenTable” feature, maximizing utilization of available OR time. Baptist Health Medical Center South surgical services leadership used the Collect module to assess block usage in a surgeon-centric, defensible manner, and were able to identify opportunities to repurpose “collectable” unused block time that could actually be used for other cases, without negatively impacting surgeons’ practices or metrics. The Analyze module gave both leadership and surgeons at Baptist Health Medical Center South deep visibility into a single source of truth for key operational metrics. Baptist Health Medical Center South leadership used this data to identify specific opportunities to improve OR efficiency and take targeted actions, while surgeons, accessing their data anytime on both mobile and desktop, could better understand their OR usage and were motivated to improve meaningful metrics.

Baptist Health Jacksonville has since rolled out iQueue to all ORs endoscopy suites in the system, after seeing noticeable results in Baptist Health Medical Center South.

Engaging LeanTaaS was an important step in improving OR utilization throughout Baptist Health hospitals. We received real, worthwhile results from our investment in LeanTaaS and alignment of people and processes. Improving our OR operations translates to surgical growth, engaged providers, and improved patient care, all of which are helping us achieve our organizational goals.

Amy Cate Huveldt

Vice President of Performance Excellence, Baptist Health