Outpatient Surgery Magazine

OR Excellence Awards 2016 - September 2016 - Subscribe to 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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Other facility managers are facing the same dilemma, which begs the question: How late is too late to start the last case of the day? Some work backwards from the end time. At the Surgery Center of Fort Collins (Colo.), the last cases of the day must be scheduled to end at 5 p.m., says Susan Lewton, RN, CNOR, the quality coordinator. Kingsport (Tenn.) Day Surgery shoots for a 4 p.m. end time, but the cutoff's not set in stone. Jessica Rutters, MBA, Kingsport's administrator, allows for exceptions "when it makes sense," such as when she doesn't expect a discharge problem or it's a short, relatively routine case like a carpal tunnel release. The Texas Orthopedics Surgery Center in Austin, Texas, staggers the start times for its OR teams, scheduling 3 teams at the start of the day and 1 team to start later to cover the later cases. If more than 1 of the 3 ORs is scheduled to run past 5 p.m., an agency team comes in. "That being said, there are times that the schedule just blows up and all of our planning and good intentions get lost in the craziness," says Jennifer King, RN, BSN, of Texas Orthopedics. "If a patient requires a PACU stay past 2030 or so, we consider a transfer. We hate doing them, but if that's what it takes, then that's what we'll do." Ms. King tries to book the docs that tend to arrive late or run past their sched- uled time earlier in the day. "If that's not possible," she says, "then we try to limit the number of cases they book for that day." — Dan O'Connor S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 6 • O U T PA T I E N TS U R G E R Y. N E T • 1 5 When's the latest you'll start a case? 1 p.m. 3% 2 p.m. 6% 3 p.m. 25% 4 p.m. 31% 5 p.m. 35% SOURCE: Outpatient Surgery Magazine InstaPoll, August 2016, n=309 InstaPoll

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