OU Health, the academic health system in Oklahoma City that operates the city’s only Level I trauma center, created an enterprise-wide OR operating system. It deployed the platform in stages but rolled out each capability broadly rather than testing it in isolated areas, then redesigned its allocation policy through data-driven governance.
In one year, the system grew case volume 7% without adding an OR, unlocking more than 173,600 prime-time case minutes and $2.17 million in incremental contribution margin.
Lisa Case, DNP, joined OU Health in September 2025 after serving at a University of Virginia community hospital. Earlier in her career, she spent about 25 years at Mayo Clinic. She joined partway through a partnership with LeanTaaS, which the system’s anesthesiologist and associate chief medical officer had initiated with surgeons and executive leadership.
During a featured session sponsored by LeanTaaS at Becker’s Healthcare Perioperative Summit on Sept. 15, Dr. Case explained how OU Health grew volume without new rooms, capital or staff, using LeanTaaS’ iQueue for Operating Rooms.
Here are 4 key takeaways from the session.
1. Point solutions limit capacity
Dr. Case described a familiar starting point that involved all of OU Health’s ORs assigned, no capital, no new FTEs, yet surgeons reported backlogs while open time went unused.
Manual processes could not match supply to demand; scheduling was not centralized; data sat in silos with no single source of truth and Epic offered only historical reporting.
“We needed a partner,” Dr. Case said. “We did not just need new software or a new bell and whistle.”
2. Go enterprise-wide
OU Health established the partnership in the second quarter of 2025. It launched surgeon access and an analytics foundation in July, soft-launched a real-time day-of-surgery view for charge nurses, managers, anesthesia and PACU in October and activated the full platform with a staff planner in December.
From April to June 2026, it redesigned its block policy through data-driven governance. “We did not do any pilots, we did not do any small tests of change,” Dr. Case said. “We went all in with all the ORs at the same time.”
3. Visibility, proactivity and accountability
In one year, OU Health grew case volume 7% with no new ORs, unlocking more than 173,600 prime-time case minutes and $2.17 million in incremental contribution margin, a figure Dr. Case called conservative while acknowledging other variables, including surgeons who arrived and departed.
Approved open-time requests rose from 131 earlier this year to 309 and were submitted an average of 20 days in advance. OU Health’s policy releases unused block time at 14 days, but surgeons are increasingly releasing time earlier on their own.
Surgeons released 280 blocks totaling 118,000 minutes and prime-time utilization rose 4%. Only 29% of released time was refilled. Before the platform, Dr. Case noted, all of it would have gone unused, but closing that gap is the next problem to solve.
4. Governance drives success
Block allocation moved from spreadsheet debates to an OR allocation subcommittee that plans to review utilization quarterly.
“If we have the tools but we don’t have the governance structure around it, we remain in status quo,” Dr. Case said.
Blocks were now assigned to service lines whose chairs distribute them. “It was not politics, it was not seniority, it was not the surgeon that yelled the loudest,” she said. “It was really looking at data.”
OU Health plans to complete the OB-GYN rollout and expand the platform at its surgery center. It is also evaluating an upstream patient-readiness module aimed at reducing day-of-surgery cancellations, while Dr. Case said she anticipates future expansion to the community hospital in Edmond and the children’s hospital.
Her advice for systems eyeing similar gains: engage physicians early by asking what the pebble in their shoe is, commit hospital-wide and keep a growth mindset.
“You can’t say, ‘I can’t.’ You have to say, ‘I will try,’” Dr. Case said.
