electronic medical records. This lets the surgeon access the patient's
path report, X-rays, CCT scans and other pieces of information in the
OR and display them on the big screens for the entire team to see.
High-tech suites
While our high-tech rooms work effortlessly now, it took a lot of prep
and planning to get there. After our lease with our previous vendor
ended, we started looking into integration. Several manufacturers
offer integrated suites, but we sought out those offering the most up-
to-date features, like 3D video and voice activation.
Once it was narrowed to 2 contenders, we solicited input from the
surgical teams. For several weeks, staff and surgeons trialed the equip-
ment. In the end, everyone voted. They overwhelmingly chose one com-
pany (which we ultimately went with) because it had more technology
to offer.
After we chose the vendor, next up was deciding which rooms to
renovate and what technology to include. I considered the updates
the rooms needed right away — like new video systems and booms,
for example — as well as features I thought they might need for the
future, like video conferencing, since the hospital's goal at the time
was to become a teaching facility.
This type of thinking could help save you thousands if you're con-
sidering integration. By getting the technology we needed for both
today and tomorrow, we saved ourselves from having to go through
the backend of the system to upgrade it with the videoconferencing
technology, which would have cost twice as much.
While the hospital originally planned to renovate and integrate only
a few of the ORs, we ultimately decided to do 6 of our 8 rooms, only
leaving out our 2 urology suites. We knew that otherwise it would be a
scheduling nightmare for surgeons. Everyone wanted to use this tech-
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