Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Personal Battle - March 2021 - Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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ings is relatively straightforward and very doable if you follow these basic steps. • Gather data. First, select the highest volume procedure from each of your service lines. Have members of your surgical team review the preference cards for those cases and list in a spreadsheet the most expensive supply items they think could be eliminated. They should base their judgements on their experience and knowl- edge of how procedures are performed and what surgeons use. As these team members work the high-volume procedures, they should make note of how many of the costly supply items were opened and how many were actually used. Over a period of several months, they'll have collected enough information for you to make data-driven decisions about trim- ming your supply budget. • Pick the right person. Interestingly, the perfect staff member to review preference cards often isn't the charge nurse or another member of the team with 20 or 30 years of experience. These leaders are often desensitized to the amount of waste that takes place daily and aren't incentivized to reduce it, as the excess supplies at least seem to make the procedure that's in front of them easier to complete. Consider tapping surgical techs instead. They'll bring fresh eyes to the situation, will feel elevated about the responsibility and will take the job seriously. • Maintain momentum. Surgical team members at many facilities already try to keep preference cards updated, but it's often done informally and inefficiently. It's also a time-consuming process that's often bumped down the priority lists of busy staff members. When surgical techs (or whoever handles the data collection at your facility) start showing others their spreadsheet of supply items that can be removed from regular rotation, it often sparks a cul- ture shift. Conversations begin among staff mem- bers and even surgeons about which items they can do without, and whether items actually need to be opened. At Stanford Health Care, this constant chat- ter led to real staff education about the actual costs of supplies, which we formalized in a fun way by running a Jeopardy-like game about product prices during daily huddles. • Scale the savings. The savings you realize from implementing a program like this will go beyond no longer purchasing unnecessary items. Nurses and techs will spend less time gathering 10 items for procedures when only five will do. They also won't have to remember to open supplies only if they're needed or spend time restocking unused items. Your team will appreciate being able to focus more of their attention on other important tasks. Once your supply-tracking process gets started, staff members will see that it's working and making their lives easier — and saving your facility signifi- cant amounts of money. That's when it's time to consider putting more resources into the program to realize even more savings. At Stanford Health Care, for example, the techs' spreadsheets served as a starting point for the cre- ation of an automated algorithm that scoured elec- tronic health records to determine which supplies were crucial and which weren't needed. The algo- rithm made corresponding updates to preference cards within the system. These changes created sus- tained cost savings over time without staff mem- bers having to manually update the cards. More than money You can implement a program for updating prefer- ence cards with your current resources at little to no cost. It could prove to be more effective at sav- ing money than traditional efforts such as creating supply purchasing committees or implementing sur- geon incentive programs. All you have to do for your efforts to make a real impact is get started. Mr. Olson (johannon.olson@gmail.com), who recently retired from Stanford (Calif.) Health Care, is an independent healthcare management advisor. M A R C H 2 0 2 1 • O U T P A T I E N T S U R G E R Y . N E T • 5 7 All you have to do for your efforts to make a real impact is get started.

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