The University of Tennessee Medical Center grew surgical case volume 8% without adding a single operating room.
The organization is a Level I trauma center in Knoxville, Tenn. It runs 36 ORs, a hospital-based surgery center, an endoscopy center and three joint venture ambulatory surgery centers, which together perform more than 28,000 procedures a year. That growth didn’t come from construction. It came from making better use of OR time the organization already had.
The starting point will sound familiar to many perioperative leaders. Surgeon offices requested OR time through spreadsheets, phone calls and workarounds. Without clear visibility into open capacity, available time was difficult to find and book. Block decisions leaned on anecdotes and historical ownership rather than shared data.
In this on-demand webinar, Melanie B. Burgess explains how her team rebuilt OR access around real-time visibility and transparent reporting. Ms. Burgess is vice president of perioperative services and executive director of the Center for Perioperative Medicine at UT Medical Center. The organization reported approximately 9,500 hours of approved open-time requests and a 5% increase in room utilization.
Learnings include:
- How UT Medical Center gave surgeon offices real-time visibility into open OR time
- How surgeon offices gained a streamlined way to identify, request and secure open time
- How transparent utilization reporting moved block time conversations from opinion to problem-solving
- The change management tools, including release contests and block policy playbooks, that improved block release habits