Smart Ways to Save Money

Increasing case volumes is the obvious way to infuse your facility with additional revenue. Looking at ways to improve efficiencies, limit waste and make smart purchasing decisions are also important factors that ultimately contribute to running a fiscally sound facility. Your choices surrounding case scheduling, investments in capital equipment and supply buys must always be made with an eye on the bottom line because reducing expenses is another effective way to pad profits.

Filling out your daily surgical schedule based on estimates of how long procedures last instead of actual case times leads to a cascade of problems, including paying staff to stand around in empty ORs waiting for the next case to start.

The first way to address this issue is to realize that case times shouldn't be defined as the time that elapses between when incisions are made and when they're closed. Patients have to be positioned, prepped and anesthetized before surgery and woken up and moved to recovery afterward. If your historic scheduled case times are recorded using start-to-end times, meaning only the length of the procedure itself, I recommend adding at least 10 minutes to that time to reflect the more accurate in-room/out-room time.

Consider investing in a software package to evaluate your historic case time data and use that information to schedule cases based on how long they typically last, not how long you think they last. Take the additional time to break down the data by procedure and long-term averages. Doing so is helpful if surgeons question the recorded case times and point to an extenuating circumstance with a single procedure. Having procedure-grouped data lets you show that a certain procedure routinely takes longer than the time for which it was scheduled, and helps you make the case for adjusting the surgical schedule to improve overall efficiencies. You couldn't make your case nearly as well if you were still scheduling your cases with a written ledger. There's no substitute for being able to present hard data derived from scheduling software to ensure case times are accurate, and staffing and supply resources are properly allocated.

We used to collect fluid waste in lined canisters, added chemicals to solidify the contents and then dropped the liners in bins of red bag waste. The additional weight of the solidified liquid added to the expense of regulated waste disposal, which is often calculated by the pound, so we switched to mobile collection systems that wheel into each OR. Once the procedure is completed, staff push the units to a docking station, which automatically suctions the contents into the sewer system. In-wall disposal units that automatically flush individual fluid collection canisters are also available and take up less space.

Disposable, absorbent floor mats are a cost-effective option for keeping OR floors dry, particularly during orthopedic procedures in which surgeons must stand in a place that mobile collection systems can't reach. The mats also minimize slip-and-fall risks. You'll also devote less staff time to cleaning up fluid from OR floors, a factor that could allow you to fill your schedule with more revenue-producing cases.