Success Stories

UMC El Paso Increased Case Minutes by 19% per OR

19% Increase in case minutes per OR during first six months of iQueue usage

50% of surgeons using iQueue are receiving Analyze metrics via SMS or Email

14,500 Minutes of requested open time per OR during first year with iQueue

Summary

University Medical Center of El Paso is a not-for-profit, 394 bed-community hospital in El Paso, Texas. With 11 operating rooms and one trauma room, the hospital provides the only Level 1 trauma center and Level 1 stroke center in the El Paso region. UMC El Paso also serves as a teaching institution in partnership with Texas Tech University’s Paul L. Foster School of Medicine. Consistently named one of America’s Top 100 Hospitals, UMC El Paso has been providing the region with quality healthcare for more than a century.

Profile

394 bed community hospital

11 ORs, 1 trauma room

Only Level 1 trauma center and stroke centers in the region

Problem

UMC El Paso’s leadership requires regular reporting to make effective management decisions and optimize perioperative workflows. Manually creating these reports was time consuming, especially given individual metric requests from providers.

Additionally, surgeons felt there was not enough time in their assigned blocks and had little access to open time to supplement this. This resulted in surgeons requesting additional block time or having to add their cases to add-on time. Although there was already ample first-come-first-serve time, visibility into it was limited. Additionally, gaining access to this time early, which was often not possible, is a key factor in ensuring the time is used.

Solution

UMC El Paso implemented iQueue for Operating Rooms' Analyze module to help with the reporting needs of the organization. This empowered their reporting team to quickly have access to many key metrics used to monitor OR efficiency as well as deep dive into key operational questions. Furthermore, Analyze allowed surgeons to have access to their individualized up-to-date metrics at any time and have reports sent to them on a weekly basis.

Exchange increased surgeons’ and schedulers’ visibility into the open time on the scheduling grid and made it easy to find and reserve open time for cases. Open time is now visible and being requested months in advance through the Exchange open time calendar. In addition to this, surgeons can now quickly see when robotic equipment is available, ensuring precious OR equipment is able to be utilized