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February 2015 | O U T PAT I E N TS U R G E R Y. N E T
PUT team member is going to take the initiative to check with sterile process-
ing and make sure what we need is going to be available."
The initiative has helped trim the hospital's already-tight average turnover time
by a minute or 2.
"It doesn't sound like much," says Ms. Ramsey, "but when you do the math, with
the number of rooms we're running, it adds 10 hours of additional patient-schedul-
ing time per month. One minute can make a dramatic
difference." — Jim Burger
switched from a cleaning solution that had a dry time and contact
time of 10 minutes to hydrogen peroxide wipes with a kill time of 5
minutes and a dry time of 1 minute. Practically a no-brainer. "So we're
not just standing around watching the paint dry," says Mr. Higgins.
5. Use tracker boards to alert the turnover team.
When a surgeon's closing, the circulating nurse or anesthesia provider
sends an alert via the EMR, and tracker boards throughout the facility
let orderlies know the room is about to be turned over. "There are
boards in every OR, at the front desk, in PACU, in pre-op, in the doc-
tor's lounge, in the employee lounge — every place you might want to
be able to see where patients are," says Ms. Dockery. "You can even
see where the patients are on the way into the bathroom."
The circulator goes with the patient, but the rest of the staff members
stay behind and are quickly bolstered by a couple of orderlies who are
ready to go when the doors open. "They hover," says Mr. Higgins. "So
there's no waiting. In a lot of hospitals, the norm is, I'll be right there.
And each of the players has standard work they're following," adds Ms.
Dockery. "So there's no question as to who's doing what."
