Operating Room Utilization Rates

If all of your rooms are at 85 percent utilization during your regular business hours each day that s an indication you may need to build more ors.

Operating room utilization rates. Operating rooms are the proverbial heart of a hospital. 144 000 2 000 capacity utilization rate which was 74 for leslie s company or 74 144 000 2 000 74 72 74 97 29. In the example we see that the utilization rate for days where the surgeon used two ors is 68 5. Keep operating rooms fully used when staffed but the optimum utilization of an operating room or is not known.

The committee will make adjustments as deemed necessary to block time to ensure maxi mum efficiency in the surgical services department. This rate is higher because it has to account for the other 26 of the company s available hours that are non. Extensive operating room or utilization is a goal of or directors and hospital administrators. We sought to identify those factors that influence optimum utilization.

Even if you re happy with your utilization as a metric you know you have several problems. Best practices for efficient operating rooms. Corporate capacity utilization rates. New surgeons can t get block time block owners resist changes nurses and anesthesiologists want more predictable schedules and.

We set operational goals of having cases start within 15 min of the scheduled time and of having the cases end no more than 15 min past the scheduled end of the day. Unfortunately the optimum level of utilization is not well defined nor is it clear what tradeoffs are required to achieve optimum utilization. In order to justify two operating rooms the surgeon s utilization rate should be at least as high as the overall utilization rate of all the facility s operating rooms covered by the anesthesia group. When we talk about or utilization so that s the utilization of the rooms itself you want to again be at about 75 85 percent utilization.

We created a simulation of an or to define op timum utilization. Operating room hour 1 000 hr 1 2 000 hr 2 000 hr turnover time for all cases mean time from previous patient out of the or to next patient in the or including setup and cleanup 40 min 25 40 min 25 min prediction bias bias in case duration estimates per 8 hours of operating room time 15 min 5 15 min 5 min prolonged turnovers. No matter how you calculate your operating room utilization if it s less than 80 there s room for improvement. The block utilization committee will review compliance with operating room utilization guidelines policy monthly.

Flow of patient through the or impacts all departments from ed emergency department or icu intensive care unit and beyond. The capacity utilization rate is important for assessing a company s current operating efficiency and it helps provide insight into cost structure in the.