As surgical demand climbs and anesthesia shortages persist, leading organizations are finding they can free up significant operating room capacity without adding new bricks and mortar.
During a recent webinar hosted by LeanTaaS in collaboration with Becker’s Healthcare, physician leaders from WakeMed (Raleigh, N.C.), Central Carolina Surgery (Greensboro, N.C.) and Loma Linda (Calif.) University Health shared how physician-led governance, paired with advanced analytics, is driving measurable results — including double-digit increases in prime-time utilization, hundreds of thousands of OR minutes released and returns on investment as high as 12.7x.
Here are four key takeaways from the discussion.
1. OR inefficiency is no longer sustainable, and data makes the case for change.
Panelists agreed that traditional OR management models are no longer keeping pace with rising demand. Ihab Dorotta, MD, chief of quality and patient safety and chief of clinical operations at Loma Linda University Health, pointed to national benchmarks showing average OR utilization remains around 60%, even as surgical volumes grow 2% to 3% annually and anesthesia shortages persist.
“We’ve gotten very good at diagnostics and therapeutics, but we don’t spend enough effort on delivering what we know to the point of care,” Dr. Dorotta said. He added that many perioperative workflows still rely on “fax, paper, phones” — an approach that creates unnecessary friction, delays and wasted capacity.
Against that backdrop, leaders across organizations emphasized that transparent, trusted data was essential to overcoming skepticism and aligning surgeons, administrators and staff around shared goals.
2. Real-time visibility can eliminate day-of-surgery friction.
At Cone Health, live operational visibility has reduced communication breakdowns and staff burden. Matthew Tsuei, MD, president of Central Carolina Surgery, a Duke Health practice, and former chair of the Cone Health iQueue Committee, described how an up-to-date view of surgical schedules — via LeanTaaS’ Real-Time View functionality — has replaced dozens of manual calls and pages.
“Right now, coordinating cases involves a lot of 1980s-style communication: phone calls, pages and people tracking each other down,” Dr. Tsuei said. “With Real-Time View, everyone is looking at the same schedule at the same time. If a case finishes early or gets delayed, notifications go out automatically, so you’re not making five to eight calls every time something changes.”
Cone Health reported more than 200 labor hours saved per day systemwide, nearly 400,000 OR minutes proactively released and a 12.7x ROI after implementing LeanTaaS’ iQueue for Operating Rooms.
3. Expanding optimization beyond the OR creates new anesthesia capacity.
At WakeMed, leaders quickly realized that focusing solely on ORs was not enough. Charles Harr, MD, chief medical officer, said procedural areas such as catheterization labs, endoscopy and interventional radiology all draw from the same limited anesthesia workforce — a dynamic he described as resembling the Wild West.
As WakeMed’s services and case volume expanded, Dr. Harr said managing ORs separately from procedural areas made it harder to align staffing, satisfy physicians and keep operations running smoothly. Integrating those environments required shared oversight and data clinicians could trust when making block and staffing decisions.
“You have to have data, and it’s got to be accurate data; it’s got to be reproducible data,” Dr. Harr said.
By applying consistent governance and analytics across procedural areas, WakeMed increased prime-time case minutes by 21% in procedural areas and 11% in ORs, while improving block release and achieving a 4.8x ROI. Dr. Harr added that more predictable schedules were also essential to keeping anesthesia staff and procedural teams from burning out.
The bottom line
Across systems, panelists agreed that technology alone does not drive results. Sustainable improvement requires physician leadership, clear governance and tools that move beyond prediction to action. By partnering with LeanTaaS and implementing iQueue for Operating Rooms, these organizations demonstrated that meaningful OR gains are possible — even in today’s constrained environment.
“A lot of dashboards give you the ability to know what’s happening in the system; they’re data rich. But they don’t come with a prescription as to what to do,” Dr. Dorotta said. “The prescriptive portion of this solution is the key to success, not just the prediction piece.”
For more thought leadership and real-world case studies on this topic, register for Transform Perioperative Operations Virtual Summiton February 17, 2026 (10 a.m. – 1 p.m. CT).
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