Improving Block Time Utilization to Increase Operating RoomEfficiency You are the Perioperative Director at Shady Hill MedicalCenter (SHMC), a medium sized urban community hospital which reliesheavily on the practice of surgery to support the hospital. Thereare 15 operating rooms in your hospital and you have approximately160 surgeons on the staff. As with most busy hospitals, your busysurgeons have acquired block time. This is reserved time for thesurgeons to post their cases, making their lives easier bystandardizing their work time. Block time is considered aprivilege. You have noticed that there is a substantialunderutilization of block time in your operating rooms. Therefore,you decide to meet with the Chief of Surgery and various surgicaldivision chiefs, as well as major contributing surgeons, to go overthe problem. You bring data to the meeting that shows thatapproximately half of the block time, in your opinion, is beingunderutilized, which means that operating rooms, large numbers ofstaff, and anesthesia doctors are sitting by idly when no surgeryis being preformed. There are rules in place for block times;however, most of the busier surgeons have figured out how tocircumvent the system and avoid following the criteria for blocktime. After looking at the block time utilization reports yourealize that half of the surgeons with block time are using up toand more than 70% of their allotted time, which is considered goodutilization; a quarter of the surgeons are only using it 50% of thetime; and the remaining 25% have extremely low utilization. It isalso come to your attention that a majority of the surgeons areable to keep their block time until 72 hours before the date ofsurgery, thus making it extremely difficult to fill theseunscheduled rooms. The time that a surgeon has before the operatingroom is released is known as “release time”. Release time can be asshort as 24 hours or as long as several weeks. Surgeons who have anelective practice such as plastic, ophthalmology or orthopedicsurgery should be relatively long release times, whereas surgeonswith acute practices may need shorter release periods so they canplace their urgent cases in the operating room quickly. In order toimprove operating room efficiency, you along with the surgeons,nursing and anesthesia need to develop a plan that will rewardsurgeons who have appropriate utilization, allow operating rooms tobe released in enough time that they can be backfilled by otherbusy surgeons, and allow appropriate staffing by both nursing andanesthesia. It is imperative to revise the policies for grantingblock time, maintaining block time, and assigning appropriaterelease time.
Present a background statement on the case study identifying theproblems and secondary issues particular to oversight of operationsin a clinical setting. As an administrator, based on the problemsand secondary issues identified in the previous bullet, how wouldyou suggest operational efficiency and quality of care can beenhanced? Does this scenario build a culture of excellence in thedepartment? Why or why not? Final thoughts on the course readingand viewing as applied to this case study.
