How Case Scheduling Software Can Enhance Operating Room Efficiency

Healthcare is a noble profession, but as many will attest, clinicians still have to overcome far too many daily obstacles to do what they were trained to do—treat patients.

Eliminating these obstacles with smart technology has been PerfectServe’s remit for 25 years. Medicine will always require some level of human oversight, but when you can automate manual processes that cause delays and add frustration, you’re going to make clinicians very happy. 

Lightning Bolt has been doing this for years by automating the creation of provider schedules. That same functionality is applicable to the daily OR case schedule—case scheduling software can auto-generate case assignments with your group’s policies, rules, and preferences in mind.

Disrupting the Operating Room Case Scheduling Process

As the saying goes, necessity is the father of invention, and this rang true for Dr. Mike Bronson. Dr. Bronson helped design Lightning Bolt’s case scheduling software after experiencing first-hand the struggles of building daily OR case schedules for his group. He came face to face with a vital process that was in desperate need of a revamp.

This responsibility is usually given to a senior anesthesiologist, and it’s normal to find them building the next day’s schedule in the late afternoon or early evening—after they’ve dispensed with their clinical duties. Depending on the group size, it can take anywhere from 45 minutes to a few hours to finish this process. After the schedule is sent out, it’s also inevitable that the creator receives texts, phone calls, and emails requesting revisions.

Taking on this kind of tedious task after finishing a day of procedures is, to say the least, not ideal. And that’s why Dr. Bronson was convinced he could do it better with technology.

With help from a friend who had deep experience in the fields of data analytics, advanced algorithms, and UI/UX designs, Dr. Bronson spent four months studying past data and figuring out different ways of scheduling. The next ten months were spent building the basic solution infrastructure, laying a foundation for the algorithms, and then optimizing said algorithms.

Using Case Scheduling Software to Auto-Generate Daily OR Schedules

Our case scheduling software has four main goals:

• Be faster: Save hours (or even days) each week by cutting the time required for schedule creation.
• Make use of automation: Leverage modern technology to reduce administrative burden.
• Reduce human error: Minimize double-bookings, scheduling someone at a location for which they’re not credentialed, not leaving enough time for travel between locations, etc.
• Improve operating room efficiency: Find a better way to create daily case schedules.

To put it simply, case scheduling software aligns the best anesthesia provider to the best case schedule, promotes efficiencies and transparency for all surgical staff, and helps prevent delayed or canceled cases associated with less optimal—but still very common—manual scheduling methods.

The proof is in the pudding, too. Case scheduling customers can now auto-generate and deliver a daily case schedule in just 12 minutes on average, which is down by 44 minutes versus traditional manual scheduling methods. That’s almost an 80% improvement!

Supporting Provider Wellness and Workflow Efficiency

Taking it a step further, case scheduling software leans heavily into provider wellness by supporting the concept of teaming (sometimes called “best matches”). For a variety of reasons, it’s common for anesthesiologists and surgeons to have well-defined preferences about who they work with during a procedure. Our case scheduling software will pair these optimal teams as frequently as possible. By including this functionality, this software helps to improve provider satisfaction and wellness while facilitating continuity of care.

In an interview with AIMed, Dr. Bronson noted that anesthesiologists often deal with life-threatening, traumatic events. But despite the high stakes of their clinical duties, “the most stressful part [of our jobs] is not about saving lives, but handling the paperwork that needs to be completed in the shortest possible time.”

AnesthesiaGo can make that stressful paperwork a thing of the past. Learn more about our operating room case scheduling software, or fill out the form below if you’d like a member of our team to contact you for a demo.