A fully staffed perioperative team is essential to safe, efficient surgical care — and rising procedural demand, clinician shortages and anesthesia constraints keep testing it.
But workforce shortages are only half the problem. The other half is deployment: getting the staff you already have to the right cases at the right time. Even with adequate headcount, manual spreadsheets and siloed decisions leave staffing uneven across rooms and shifts.
Leading teams are moving from reactive OR scheduling to predictive, data-driven planning that surfaces staffing gaps earlier. At Oregon Health & Science University, which runs 53 ORs and roughly 39,000 surgical cases a year, that approach saved more than 25 hours per week in staffing coordination while shortening case duration and room turnover.
This report lays out the evidence behind the shift and how perioperative leaders can put it to work.
You’ll learn:
- The difference between workforce supply and deployment, and why it matters
- How OHSU saved more than 25 hours per week in perioperative staffing coordination
- What leading professional organizations like AORN and ASATT recommend for safe staffing
- Where manual and EHR-based staffing tools fall short