PLANNING SESSION Krystle Jorgenson, MSN/MHA, RN, CNOR, (left) the manager of surgical services at UnityPoint Health-Trinity, and lead RN Melissa Murphey consult with their sister facilities.

Shared
Knowledge

When you have 3 facilities operating under the same umbrella, it's easy to slip into a silo mentality and function as though you're all independent. But doing so isn't very economical or efficient. So a couple of years ago, we began having conference calls every morning between our CS and OR leadership at each of our 3 facilities. Every morning at 10:30, we spend 10 to 20 minutes talking about what we have scheduled, our staffing and equipment needs, and how we can work together to make all of our lives a little easier. For example, if we know that on a given day, one OR department is going to be busier than usual and another is going to be slower, we can re-assign staff, instead of having to bring in a PRN for the day. We can also move equipment around to suit our needs.

There were some early bumps to work through before the calls started paying dividends. For example, we found that having them at the end of the day didn't work as well, because people were drained by that time. But now it feels like a natural part of our routine, and we've been able to cut expenses related to both staffing and equipment as a result.

Krystle Jorgenson, MSN/MHA, RN, CNOR
UnityPoint Health-Trinity
Bettendorf, Iowa
[email protected]