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B E N C H M A R K I N G
"In surgery, staffing is the biggest cost of doing business, so we
want to make sure we keep it under control and reel it back in if it
gets out of line," says Emily Duncan, RN, BS, CASC, CNOR, executive director of the Lakeland (Fla.) Surgical & Diagnostic Center.
"This is almost impossible to correct if you allow it to get out of
your established benchmark."
Martha Bush, RN, director of surgical services at Mat-Su Regional
Medical Center in Palmer, Alaska, drills down even further. She wants
to know what 1 minute of operating time costs. She tracks cost-percase minutes broken into expense categories (routine supplies, surgical supplies, staff hours and wages, implants and pharmaceuticals) by
service and by surgeon.
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Costs as a percentage of net revenue
"My new favorite benchmark to track is costs as a percentage of
net revenue," says Corbett Jackson, CASC, regional administrator of the Sutter Surgery Center Division in Novato, Calif.
"Specifically, I watch salaries, supplies and total costs as a percentage
of net revenue. I find this indicator to be the best equalizer to compare facilities of different sizes, cases or payor mixes."
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Turnover time
You're all familiar with turnover time. It's the time it takes
between the surgeon's first case and the second. "Another way
of saying it is wheels-out to wheels-in," says Nancy G. Thompson, RN,
BS, director of perioperative services at Upstate University Hospital in
Syracuse, N.Y. The lower the turnover time, the better: 7 minutes for
short cases and 10 minutes for longer ones. It's long been held that a
10-minute turnover time is a reasonable goal.
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O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | O C T O B E R 2013
