Operating rooms are among a health system’s most valuable assets, yet many remain underutilized because unused block time is difficult to reclaim. Surgeons often hold onto operating room time to preserve flexibility for urgent or complex cases, leaving schedulers with little opportunity to backfill open slots until it’s too late.
For Erlanger Health System in Chattanooga, Tenn., solving that challenge required more than better visibility into scheduling data. It required rebuilding trust between surgeons and schedulers, giving clinicians confidence to release unused operating room time earlier without sacrificing flexibility.
During a Becker’s Healthcare webinar sponsored by Qventus, Misti Mattox, RN, vice president of surgical services at Erlanger and David Atashroo, MD, chief clinical and AI officer at Qventus, discussed how AI automated scheduling workflows, helping the health system move automatic elective block releases from 72 hours to 14 days and improving OR utilization to add more than 220 surgeries per month.
Below are four takeaways from their discussion.
1. Building trust matters
Like many health systems, Erlanger had as much as 30% of its operating room block time going unused because surgeons were reluctant to release time they might need for urgent or complex cases. Traditional approaches relied on manual outreach from schedulers, often just days before surgery, leaving little opportunity to strategically fill open slots.
Instead of asking surgeons to surrender an entire day of block time, Qventus analyzed historical scheduling patterns and recommended releasing only the specific hours a surgeon was unlikely to use. That more targeted approach made participation far less disruptive while giving schedulers a much longer runway to fill available time.
“If you trust us to release your time, other people have also released their time and you should have no problem getting your add-on outside of your block,” Ms. Mattox explained.
2. Changing surgeon behavior
Broad notifications advertising open operating room time often produced little engagement because many recipients were unavailable or already operating elsewhere. Rather than sending every opportunity to every surgeon, Erlanger used AI to identify physicians whose schedules, practice patterns and availability made them strong candidates for a specific opening.
“It’s very easy to suggest open time to everybody,” Ms. Mattox said. “By being able to truly target the surgeons that you know have asked for time before, they’re going to pay attention to them and engage more.”
That precision helped Erlanger get real engagement instead of notification fatigue. Surgeons started paying attention because the opportunities they received were actually relevant to them.
That distinction helped overcome one of the biggest barriers to participation: surgeons’ concern that giving up block time meant losing future flexibility.
3. A trusted partner
Ms. Mattox said Erlanger selected Qventus not simply because of the technology, but because of the implementation support that accompanied it.
“I want you to teach me how to use it,” she recalled telling the team. “I do not want to just have a fancy contract that says now we have implemented AI technology at Erlanger.”
The partnership included weekly meetings with frontline staff, onsite support for new surgeons, scheduler training and continued optimization more than a year after implementation. Ms. Mattox said that hands-on approach helped minimize the learning curve, build confidence among clinicians and sustain momentum beyond the initial rollout.
Dr. Atashroo added that this approach was intentional because operational transformation requires more than software. “We know this isn’t just a technology problem,” he said. “We operate in the trenches with our clients every single day day in and day out to ensure our solutions are optimized to solve their unique problems so they can achieve their strategic goals.”
4. What defines success
While adding more than 220 surgeries per month was an important milestone, Ms. Mattox said case volume alone doesn’t tell the full story.
Instead, Erlanger focused on ensuring the right procedures occurred in the right setting. Lower-acuity outpatient-appropriate procedures were shifted from the health system’s Level I trauma center into ambulatory locations, increasing utilization in some outpatient service lines from the 30% to 40% range into the 70% and 80% range, with some exceeding 100%.
Erlanger’s experience suggests that AI creates the greatest value when it supports operational change rather than simply automating existing workflows. Earlier block releases, personalized surgeon engagement and consistent governance helped the health system expand surgical capacity without adding operating rooms.
For organizations pursuing similar growth, Ms. Mattox advised leaders to begin with clearly defined objectives rather than the technology itself. “Be very specific in what you need it to do. Start with your baseline data and set your goals. You either meet them or you don’t and you have to track them along the way.”
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