Operating Room Efficiency

CHI at Temple Street sought a detailed review of capacity to establish to what extent there was a need for an additional Operating Room to meet patient access challenges and accommodate service development plans.
This was against a backdrop of:

• Nurse staff shortages resulting in Operating Room closures
• Growing outpatient, inpatient and day case waiting lists requiring additional capacity
• Service developments and new surgical posts with limited potential to provide additional time.

Data models were built to quantify theatre capacity and effectiveness, waiting list demands, service development requirements and bed requirements.

Operating Room and hospital capacity data models provided a clear understanding of improvements using existing resources and those requiring additional capacity.

Our comprehensive analytical models clearly described in-session, sessional and overall utilisation for each Operating Room list. The analysis accurately quantified theatre closures, identified opportunities to improve utilisation and to re-allocate scarce sessional resources to better meet waiting list demand.

Our analytical models married information from the hospital’s Operating Room System, Emergency Department System, Patient Administration System and ICD10 coding database. This created a clear picture of requirements, including existing waiting list demand, latent outpatient demand, as well as the need to improve emergency access and meet new service developments.

Our analysis identified improvement opportunities within existing resources as well as providing evidence confirming the need to provide an additional 2,500 hours of theatre capacity.