There are a lot of hospitals that make most of their money on elective surgical procedures. Therefore, it only makes sense that hospitals should do everything they can to increase operating room turnover. What this means is that the faster you can turn over an operating room, the faster the next procedure can begin. If you can get one extra procedure out of every operating room per day, this can increase your revenue significantly. If you want to get the most out of your operating rooms, you should take advantage of operating room management software. What are a few of the top tips to keep in mind when it comes to increasing OR turnover?
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Put Patients To Sleep Before Arriving in the Room
One of the fastest ways you can increase turnover in your operating rooms is to put patients to sleep before they arrive in the operating room. There are far too many surgical suites that wait until the patient is in the room to put them to sleep. This can dramatically lengthen the amount of time people spend in the operating room because it can take the anesthesiology team a while to get someone to go to sleep. If someone is already put to sleep when they arrive in the operating room, the surgical team can get started more quickly. This can shorten the total amount of time patients spend in the operating room, increasing operating room turnover significantly.
Have the Next Set of Trays Ready To Go
Next, the hospital should make sure the next set of trays is ready to go. What this means is that the surgical team should not have to wait for the tech to assemble the tray before they can get started. As soon as the prior procedure is finished, the next stray needs to be ready to go. It might be helpful to have the surgical tech team arrive before the first operation of the day. Then, they can put all the trades together for the operation that day. There are some procedures that might be emergencies. It can be prudent to have a set of emergency trays already put together for common emergency procedures.
Focus on PACU Transport
There are plenty of other reasons why patients may spend too long in the operating room as well. For example, they may spend a lot of time waiting for transport to show up and take them to the post-surgical area. This is inexcusable, and there should always be people ready to transport patients from the operating room to the post-surgical care area. Hospitals need to focus on making their transport teams more efficient. There should always be someone available to be a little patient out of the operating room down to PACU. This can get patients out of the operating room faster, increasing turnover.
Train Your Staff Accordingly
Finally, the most important thing hospitals need to keep in mind is that their operating room staff members need to be trained accordingly. It is important to put people through continuing education when it comes to operating room turnover. There are lots of mistakes people make in the operating room, and they need to be prevented to increase turnover. For example, the transport team needs to be trained on the best practices of getting someone in and out of the operating room. Hospitals need to continually evaluate what procedures they perform frequently so they can get the trays ready faster. Nurse anesthetists also need to be pushed to put patients to sleep before they arrive in the operating room. This can dramatically increase the number of procedures that take place in a day.
Increase Your Operating Room Turnover
Ultimately, there are plenty of ways you can increase turnover in your operating rooms. Importantly, increasing turnover does not mean you have to sacrifice patient care. There are plenty of ways you can provide quality patient care without spending an inordinate amount of time in the operating room. Patients don’t want to be in the operating room any more than they have to, and if you can perform more procedures on a given day, you can increase hospital revenue. This can give you the resources you need to purchase more equipment and hire more staff.
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