OR Manager March 2022 - 15

OR Business Performance
Continued from page 13
8. Coping with change. Today's
healthcare organizations face continual
change in the form of organization
restructuring, quality improvement,
and employee retention.
As a nurse leader, you will
need to embrace change, adapt to
it, and, in doing so, re-energize and
empower the workforce.
Distinguishing data sources
As you embark on a new role as a
clinical operations manager, one of
your earliest tasks will be to identify
the reliable data sources you need to
understand current operational performance
and make recommendations for
change. You will need to identify existing
key performance indicators, analyze
current performance in relation to
those metrics, and plan and execute
new initiatives to improve or sustain operational
excellence. You will find there
are thousands of data elements across
multiple existing clinical and operational
IT systems that are integral to datadriven
decision making, such as:
* Electronic health records, which provide
a central repository of countless
data elements.
* Surgical scheduling systems, which
help manage patient care through
the surgical process through scheduling,
documentation management,
and reporting tools.
* Staffing systems, which often provide
unit-based strategies but lack
enterprise-level transparency.
* Ad hoc data, which is always in the
mix. (I am confident that anyone in
clinical leadership can recall the myriad
of information that is found only
on sticky notes, written on printouts,
kept in binders or on spreadsheets,
or is even just a part of someone's
mental checklist.)
Depending on your institution, you
will find various levels of investment
in a range of tools to address perforwww.ormanager.com
mance
improvement or operational excellence
such as consulting, electronic
medical record customizations, in situ
PI/OE initiatives, homegrown systems,
adjustments to legacy systems, and
various committees. Still, you will often
find frontline staff making on-the-fly
adjustments to respond to immediate
challenges because that is the way they
have always done it. You may also face
frustrated staff that have tired of ongoing,
and often repetitive, initiatives and
find that operational performance challenges
continue to hinder your health
system's bottom line. It is your job to
demonstrate, with data and transparency,
the what, why, and how of your
recommendations in order to get team
buy-in and ensure your improvements
stick.
With the ever-present challenges of
pinched revenues, increased expenses,
and staff shortages, it is incumbent on
operations managers to balance doing
more with less. Manual methods are
just not feasible anymore. By embracing
new technologies, clinical operations
leaders (both new and experienced) can
truly set themselves and their hospitals
apart as visionary models in the field.
This data-driven approach and transparency
will help you cultivate a culture in
which everyone feels confident in the
approach and works towards the same
goal.
During my time as a consultant at
PwC, I discovered the advent of intelligent
automation in healthcare as a
new way to transform hospital operations.
These systems combine artificial
intelligence, workflow automation, and
a transparent communication platform
to keep everyone, both clinical and nonclinical
staff, in the loop. In my experience
as a nurse executive, breakdowns
in communication were what often had
lasting chain-reaction effects, causing
patient pre-procedural requirement delays,
leaving ORs unused and wasted,
and causing recovery rooms to be overbooked
and crowded. When you have
a holistic hospital operations management
platform, everyone has the insight
and foresight to see what is coming,
visualize operations in real time, and
instantly know what role they need to
fulfill to optimize operations. In the perioperative
suite, this type of platform delivers
advanced notice of potential barriers
throughout the preoperative, intraoperative,
and postoperative pathways
to drive and sustain improvements.
Optimize the right way
The OR is a complex area that delivers
clinical care, but it is also a business
unit that is highly regulated. Industry
statistics regularly report that ORs generate
approximately 60% of a hospital's
revenue, as well as 60% of its
expenses. It is easy to see why the OR
is a particular area that requires significant
attention to maintain volume and
control costs.
Manual processes and siloed information
will not be able to provide you
with real time data, insight into the future,
or recommended prioritized actions
that need to be taken. This is an
area where I have found technology to
be most useful and that can bring new
life to your health system's operations.
As a new clinical operations leader, deploying
an effective digital transformation
strategy in your organization allows
you to constantly monitor current and
future operations and receive real-time
actionable data. In healthcare settings,
this use of intelligent automation is an
emerging discipline that analyzes and
synthesizes your data so that you can
confidently align actions and priorities
across your enterprise. With the right
digital strategy, you can put yourself
in a position to acknowledge specific
problem areas, confidently remediate
challenges, and get proper care team
alignment.
I have written and consulted extensively
on OR operations improvement
and formulated several strategies and
Continued on page 16
OR Manager | March 2022 15
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