What:…..Surgical Directions’ Executive Forum, “How to Develop and Operate a Great Perioperative Service Line”
When:….March 4th & 5th (Registration Due by February 15, 2009)
Where:…Tuscon, AZ

Surgical Direction’s is pleased to announce our upcoming Executive Forum entitled, “How to Develop and Operate a Great Perioperative Service Line”. This event will take place alongside the American Association of Clinical Directors’ 2010 Annual Meeting on March 4th & 5th and is being held at Loews Ventana Canyon Resort in Tucson, AZ.

Surgical Directions has designed this event specifically for hospital and health leaders that have completed a perioperative transformation and are looking for additional insights and guidance into what other top hospitals and managers are doing to build and maintain market leading perioperative services.

The forum will include educational sessions and workshops on perioperative topics of interest, such as:

• Impact of Health Reform on Perioperative Services
  • How Health Reform will impact volume and reimbursement
  • What you should do to prepare

• How to Develop A Great Perioperative Service Line
  • Characteristics of “Better Performing” Perioperative Services
  • What are the benchmarks for “Better Performing” Operating Rooms
  • What will be the future benchmarks

• Utilizing Sales to Grow OR Volumes – Lessons from the battle field
  • How do you structure and implement sales into perioperative services
  • How do you appropriately incentivize and monitor sales representatives
  • How do you grow OR volume

• Utilizing Processes to Improve Perioperative Processes
  • How can Lean Six Sigma be utilized to improve scheduling PAT processes

• Utilizing PAT to establish a competitive advantage for your hospital, grow surgical volume and improve clinical outcomes
  • Presentation of a case study that demonstrations how PAT contributed to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital being designated as “Best Performing” by the American College of Surgeons

Continue reading »

One of the key factors for making successful changes to a block schedule or to the block schedule guidelines is working through a collaborative group with significant physician (surgeon and anesthesiologist) representation. The collaborative group approach allows the surgeons to have a say in what is “fair” ie: utilization thresholds, block durations, and mechanisms for enforcing the guidelines.

What challenges have you faced in trying to make changes and/or enforce the “rules”?

As you are well aware, block scheduling has a direct impact on an OR’s efficiency and on surgeon’s satisfaction. Over the past several years, Surgical Directions has developed and effectively deployed block schedules that have improved OR utilization and actually increased surgeon satisfaction and productivity. Some of our “best practice” guidelines include:

• Establish and monitor block guidelines via a Surgical Executive Committee (with surgeon, anesthesia, nursing and administration involvement)
• Allow only 8+ hour blocks
• Variable release times by specialty
• 20%+ “open time” to allow for ease of access to schedule by non-blocked surgeons
• Monitor block utilization on a monthly basis and provide individual surgeon notices on a quarterly basis
• If necessary, reduce block time by frequency of block not duration of block

These are just some of our guidelines – what has worked well at your organization?