cent observation rooms, where guests can watch surgeries in
progress. The viewing spaces will let us share outpatient surgery's
ever-changing advancements with visiting healthcare professionals.
• Smart storage. We decided against adding built-in storage cabi-
nets that are found in many ORs today. Instead, we'll stock procedure-
and surgeon-specific supplies in rolling storage carts, which we'll
keep in a sterile core adjacent to the ORs. The carts will be filled with
needed items at the start of the day and rolled into ORs before each
case.
We hope the carts limit the need for members of the surgical team
to leave ORs in the middle of procedures to retrieve missing supplies
or instruments. Limiting foot traffic should improve surgical efficien-
cies and limit the number of times OR doors are opened during cases,
which is one potential way to lower surgical site infection risks.
• Hanging equipment. Adding booms to each OR was another high-
M A R C H 2 0 1 9 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y. N E T • 2 5
geons' surveys and was less expensive than competing products, it's
fairly easy for us to agree on approving the purchase. When a con-
sensus cannot be reached among the group, we work with the
equipment's vendor to address issues surgeons raise about the
device. If surgeons still remained unconvinced, we identify another
option and repeat the trialing and voting process until a majority
rules in favor of adding the device.
So far, the democratic decision-making procedure has been an
invaluable part of our equipment planning strategy. Making pur-
chasing selections with this method is time-consuming, but we've
found it to be the most effective way to fill our new facility with
instruments and devices that all of our surgeons have agreed to
use. — Michael E. Joyce, MD
