According to Mr. Peters, perioperative services are still a major driving factor for revenue and profitability. “The most successful healthcare organizations have a couple of traits in common that help drive the perioperative performance,” he said. “They typically have collaborative leadership, which includes physicians, nurses and administrators, focused processes to enhance operating room efficiency and an obsession with clinical excellence.” These organizations therefore, see better financial results.
According to Dr. Young, there are 10 important elements of ensuring safe surgery and improving perioperative performance:
• Establishing a surgical services executive committee involving clinical, anesthesiology and administrative leadership.
• Incorporating a single path for scheduling.
• Establishing a pre-anesthesia testing center with standardized protocols.
• Implementing a document management system for scheduling and the pre-anesthesia testing center.
• Ensuring excellence in sterile processing.
• Implementing efficiency crew resource management.
• Implementing the WHO checklist.
• Establishing a ‘daily huddle.’
• Establishing an effective error reporting process.
• Establishing a just culture, one in which staff can fail and still be forgiven.
“Incorporating these elements can improve length of stay and reduce readmissions, in addition to driving perioperative performance,” said Dr. Young.
A collaborative governance structure is key for improving perioperative performance, said Mr. Peters. If surgeons, nurses, anesthesiologists and senior leadership come together to discuss perioperative performance, they can together decide what it should look like. “Especially engaging the anesthesiology team can really help boost perioperative performance,” he said. “An engaged team whose incentives align with the hospital can really help drive perioperative services.”
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