“Amazon has transformed the industry and the consumer experience, and they have been able to do so by relentlessly focusing on the elimination of waste,” Mr. Park explained at the Becker’s Hospital Review 7th Annual Meeting in Chicago.
Together, he and Brett Reed, CEO of technology company Cohealo, outlined some of the areas in healthcare where waste and inefficiencies are most prevalent, and proposed a solution.
“At Cohealo, we regularly see just how inefficient the process is to purchase and deploy perioperative equipment. Those inefficiencies impede care delivery,” said Mr. Reed. “As surgical technology evolves and becomes more procedure-specific, it also becomes more expensive, which makes it difficult for health system executives to decide where and how to use capital for equipment across the system.”
Downstream, the limited capital earmarked for perioperative equipment ends up creating competition and silos within the hospital, which is detrimental to optimizing patient care delivery.
“When physicians are dealing with insufficient or inappropriate levels of equipment, patient safety can be compromised,” Mr. Reed added.
To address this problem, the presenters suggested hospitals use a technology platform, like the one created by Cohealo, which allows organizations to share perioperative equipment across their sites.
In addition to getting various health system sites to operate as one collaborative entity, instead of individual hospital silos, Mr. Reed said leveraging technology to share perioperative equipment across sites can:
- Improve staff performance by reducing the amount of time looking for equipment and overtime to accommodate case volume
- Optimize speed and case scheduling inefficiencies
- Boost patient access to specialized care across sites
“There are tools and technology in place now that can turn an inefficiency into an opportunity, and it doesn’t require us to reinvent the wheel,” said Mr. Reed. “We just need to take existing business processes and make them more efficient so we can improve care.”
More articles on perioperative services:
Surgical Directions Names President and Chief Operating Officer
AORN campaign aims to ‘clear’ hazardous smoke from ORs
Executive briefing: The business of optimizing patients prior to surgery
