Problem
OhioHealth is a family of not-for-profit hospitals and healthcare facilities in Central Ohio. Serving patients since 1892, Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, is a 1,059-bed teaching institution and the largest hospital in the OhioHealth system. The flagship hospital shares the OhioHealth mission “to improve the health of those we serve”. It is recognized locally, regionally and nationally for quality healthcare and consistently ranked one of the nations best hospitals.
In trying to increase access to the operating room and accountability for the use of allocated block time, the Surgical Services Leadership Team had to consistently balance surgeon satisfaction with a focus on achieving operating metrics (volume, utilization, growth). The leadership team perceived there to be significant operating capacity and unused block time, but had little insight into where the opportunities existed. Furthermore, previous block management approaches, based on broken metrics like block utilization, made it challenging to hold surgeons accountable for unused block time. In order to drive the right outcomes at Riverside, the leadership team knew they needed a solution with embedded predictive and prescriptive analytics that would help transform core operational processes.
Solution
The Surgical Services Leadership Team partnered with LeanTaaS to implement iQueue for Operating Rooms. iQueue’s Exchange and Collect modules helped transform traditional business operations at Riverside to drive increased access and enhance accountability for the use of allocated block time:
Exchange identified and exposed the inventory of open time to surgeons and their clinic schedulers. Based on historical booking patterns, Exchange was able to identify surgeons who had not booked cases into their block and proactively remind them to release potential unused time. After inventory was exposed, the “OpenTable” feature allowed for immediate access to available operating time for surgeons who did not have allocated block or needed additional operating time.
Collect provided the leadership team with a surgeon centric metric to evaluate the performance of all block owners. The module mined patterns of OR usage by block owner and identified portions of time that could truly be repurposed or “collectable”. It allowed the leadership team to repurpose unused block time without impacting surgeons existing case volume.
Results
Less than 6 months into the partnership, OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital reported
both increased capacity, access and accountability.
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