Improving Organizational Performance: Decreasing Operating Room Turnaround Time

Abstract

Potomac Hospital, a 153 bed community hospital in Prince William County, Woodbridge, VA, endeavored to decrease the Operating Room (OR) turnaround time from over double industry standards to 20 minutes. Performance Improvement teams streamlined operations by focusing on surgical services leadership, patient scheduling and scheduling system upgrade, and other factors affecting OR turnaround time. Turnaround time was measured at three stages, baseline at initial review (Aug 97); Nov 97 during process review, and Mar 98 during initial performance improvement implementation. The data showed that while the goal of 20 minutes turnaround time was not achieved during the seven month time frame, significant increases in the number of cases to achieve 15 - 20 minute turnaround times were attained; however, other turnaround times of over 65 minutes affected the mean significantly. Recognizing that performance improvement efforts are long term, Potomac Hospital leadership has made a commitment to the long term performance improvement efforts with favorable outcomes.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 01, 1998
Accession Number
ADA372315

Entities

People

  • Dorka M. Picard

Organizations

  • Academy of Health Sciences

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Best Practices
  • Control Systems
  • Health Care
  • Health Care Facilities
  • Health Services
  • Hospitals
  • Information Systems
  • Leadership
  • Management Personnel
  • Medical Personnel
  • Patient Care
  • Physicians
  • Scheduling (Production)
  • Spreadsheet Software
  • Standards
  • Surgery
  • Training

Fields of Study

  • Medicine

Readers

  • Mathematics or Statistics
  • Systems Analysis and Design
  • Trauma or Military Medicine