Late Start Times in Operating Rooms (Part 1)

Nobody likes to wait.
This can be especially true in hospitals where stress levels, fear and anxiety are often high. It goes without saying, but each hospital should be making active and consistent attempts to ensure their OR starts on time.
First, let’s take a look at the potential (and numerous) causes of late start times:
What are the causes of late start times?

• Unclear policy/lack of policy enforcement.
• Anesthesiologist/surgeon late arrival.
• Nurse/tech late arrival.
• Patient late arrival.
• Room/equipment not ready.
• Lengthy pre-op paperwork.
• Last-minute diagnostic tests.
• Pharmacy delay.

Unfortunately, this can create a series of negative results for your hospital. Including decreased patient satisfaction due to longer wait times, frustrated staff because of longer hours worked, over-expenditure of the OR’s time and resources, and paying staff for longer and later days.
While all of this is bad enough, these results lead to a common destination: increased costs and decreased revenue.
You can't simply look the other way when OR start times in your hospital are lagging behind. Click To Tweet
If you are finding late start times are becoming, or are already the norm in your organization, you need to start looking at solutions.
What are some of these potential solutions? We’ll cover them in part two of this series.