Rush University Medical Center Increased Room Utilization by 3%

3% Increase in overall room utilization
30% Increase in OR minutes for top requesters of time
16% Decrease in abandoned block time
5 day time to release, up from >24 hours

Summary

Located in downtown Chicago, Rush University Medical Center is a nationally ranked hospital with 11 ORs that performs about 30,000 surgeries a year. Rush University Medical Center is ranked as one of the top US hospitals, and has 11 top ranked clinic programs, including three of the best in the state of Illinois. 

Profile

Urban medical center

Top US hospital, 11 top ranked clinic programs

11 ORs

30,000 cases performed per year 

Problem

With its need to recruit new surgeons to grow, Rush University Medical Center had a completely blocked schedule with short auto-release times. This prevented them from optimizing OR capacity and helping surgeons find open operating time to perform their cases. Service lines felt the need to hoard what time they did have and were reluctant to release it, so new surgeons were challenged with finding and reserving time for themselves. Especially after the backlog of delayed cases accumulated from the initial COVID-19 surge in 2020, Rush University Medical Center needed to unlock as much OR capacity as possible while improving block utilization fairly.

Solution

Rush University Medical Center went live with iQueue for Operating Rooms during the pandemic. The implementation immediately made block utilization data visible to surgeons, department leaders and schedulers alike. This single source of truth supported productive, fact-centered discussions about how much time individual surgeons truly needed for their cases, and how to release OR transfer time not being actively used across surgeons and service lines. iQueue also gave surgeons an OpenTable-like platform to proactively reserve and release time. Newer surgeons felt empowered to claim the time they needed, while more senior surgeons felt free to release excess time they did not need. 

Overall, iQueue enabled more cases to be performed in the time and space available, which showed in Rush University Medical Center’s OR utilization results. 

One of the most powerful things about iQueue was the data. Surgeons really relate to data. The whole concept of surgeons using technology to drive their own scheduling is a lucrative portion of using iQueue.
Janet Stifter
VP Hospital Operations, Perioperative and Interventional Services and Professional Nursing Practice at Rush University Medical Center

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