Surgical |

Increase OR efficiency by supporting healthcare workers

With healthcare managers under pressure to find time and cost savings, there are opportunities to increase efficiency in the operating room (OR).

Supporting efficiency in the operating room (OR)

Operating room optimisation crosses a number of disciplines – from improving turnover time in the operating room to achieving operating room efficiency metrics, from managing OR inventory to precision time management in the OR, from waste management to broader concerns about sustainability initiatives in the operating room, there are multiple dimensions to increasing OR efficiency.

Successfully optimising the OR for the perioperative experience means supporting healthcare workers with best practices, processes and tools that support healthcare managers’ ability to do more with smaller hospital budgets and carry out more OR procedures in more efficient ways – all without compromising on quality or safety.

OR personnel and healthcare managers tell us that a number of challenges make their work more difficult. First and foremost, preparing for surgery, collecting the right components and surgical instruments and equipment in the operating room, and cleaning up afterwards, are the costliest and time-intensive activities in the OR.

Additional challenges stretch resources even further, such as:

  • increasing numbers of procedures and pressure to do even more
  • complex procurement processes
  • cutbacks in material management
  • understaffing
  • overtime costs.

Quantifying challenges in the OR

Supporting OR efficiency is one key to supporting OR personnel. Cutting back on time spent dealing with surgical instruments and components can significantly improve efficiency in the OR. Traditionally, nurses have needed to collect everything from the storeroom and set it all up for each procedure. Other necessary steps to get the components in place, such as stock-taking, ordering, warehousing and transportation take additional time¹.

With healthcare professionals spending a lot of time setting up procedures – up to 30 minutes² in some cases – operating rooms themselves aren’t used to their full capacity.

Because they’re spending so much time managing, unpacking, stocking and restocking surgical equipment, they have less time to spend on carrying out procedures and caring for patients. This causes unnecessary stress. And that leads to poor job satisfaction, making it hard to recruit and retain skilled surgical staff. Supporting effective operating room inventory management can improve these metrics as well.

Increasing OR efficiency

Hospitals and healthcare managers around the world are finding better ways to improve internal processes to save time and increase efficiency in the operating room.

Their goals include improving outcomes while ensuring quality and safety. That involves making best use of the resources they have, easing the stress on healthcare professionals so they can perform at their best, and maximising the use of OR so more procedures can be carried out.

Procedure-specific trays

Customised surgical procedure trays are tailored specifically for the needs of the OR staff in that hospital, dealing with that specific procedure. Procedure trays ensure that staff have the right tools at the right time, all in one convenient package.

They simplify the OR team’s work and have been shown to improve operating room efficiency: 

  • by saving 40-59% of time during set-up, hospitals can complete more procedures¹
  • by freeing up time for staff: the more components included in a single tray, the more time is saved across the entire OR process, from ordering to waste removal
  • because no components are wasted and less packaging is required, component handling is more cost-effective and efficient
  • by giving hospitals control of their own stock – hospitals have more ownership of the process and insight, enabling them to forecast more precisely

Staff can spend a lot of time searching for the right equipment for each procedure. Managing and storing stock is also extremely time-intensive. But if it’s well-organised, there are opportunities for efficiencies – reducing the time spent on preparation and change-over between surgeries and on stock management.

Solutions include colour-coding trays. This gives anyone handling them an easy visual identifier – so that they can store trays in a more organised way, notice when stock is getting low and replenish it, and pick trays before surgeries. It also means that all hospital staff can collect trays.

Efficient component management

Surgical requirements and protocols are always changing. And surgical components can be wasted when too much is ordered, creating further inefficiencies. Space is at a premium in busy hospitals too. As a result, many hospital managers are introducing lean stock management processes.

By planning deliveries of surgical equipment according to demand, they can reduce waste and cost. And they can be sure they always have the right components for the right procedures at the right time.

    1. Greiling M. A multinational case study to evaluate and quantify time-saving by using custom procedure trays for operating room efficiency. Poster presentation at the 23rd Congress of EAHM, Zürich, Switzerland, 9-10 Sep 2010.
    2. Normén A, et al. A practical approach to OR efficiency: switching to customised procedure trays in Ramsay Health Care Hospitals. J Periop Pract (Procurement Guide). 2013 [cited 14 Sep 2017];2(1):9-10. URL: http://www.molnlycke.com.au/Documents/GLOBAL%20-%20ENG/Surgical/case-study-a-practical-approach-to-or-efficiency-ramsay.pdf.