Success Stories

SUNY Upstate Medical University Increased Weekly OR Case Volume by 3.4%

3.4% Increase in weekly volume of cases

2% Increase in prime time utilization

1% Increase in staffed room utilization

10 Day increase in "release proactivity” organization wide

Summary

Syracuse, New York-based SUNY Upstate Medical University, the only academic medical center in central New York, focuses on improving the health of the community through education, biomedical research, and healthcare. As the region’s largest employer with almost 10,000 employees, SUNY Upstate Medical University serves 1.8 million people stretching north to Canada and south to Pennsylvania and includes Upstate University Hospital; Upstate University Hospital at Community Campus; Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital, and numerous satellite sites.

Profile

Academic medical center in central New York

752 beds

9,640 employees

1.8 million patient footprint

Problem

A key challenge for SUNY Upstate Medical University was standardizing data and best practices across its many facilities and employees. In the surgical space in particular, the system also struggled to meet high demand from surgeons for operating room time, despite underperforming in utilization rates. SUNY Upstate Medical University needed to maintain a “single source of truth” to provide visibility and accountability to stakeholders, and thus drive effective, unified action toward more efficient use of ORs.

Solution

SUNY Upstate Medical University’s goal in deploying iQueue for Operating Rooms across its University Hospital and at the Community Campus was to improve OR efficiency by increasing surgeon accountability for allocated time and adding transparency through data-driven performance metrics that removed ambiguity. A major focus was also to adopt a new framework for measuring OR utilization centered on collectable time — segments of time in which a case could have been scheduled but was not – and enhancing surgeons’ ability to access it when needed.

By offering standardized and actionable OR data to surgeons and other stakeholders, SUNY Upstate Medical University created significant results in just the first quarter after launch.