Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Hip With the Times - July 2017 - 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.

Issue link: http://outpatientsurgery.uberflip.com/i/846292

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 28 of 168

Take requests. Not all surgeons will want or need block time at your facility. Ask your docs what days and times they'd prefer block scheduling. 0730 start times are, of course, going to be the most popular and everybody will want to operate on Tuesdays. Then take it one step further and run those days and times by each surgeon's scheduler, who'll likely have a better sense of how reasonable the doc's request is. Crunch the numbers. Assess each surgeon's current utilization over a 6- to 12-month period, a timeframe wide enough to account for vacations and fluctuations in the schedule. Remember that doctors love numbers and will challenge any data you give them. You can run a monthly utilization report from your scheduling system or manually count the hours a physician spent in the OR. Compare requested time with time actually used. Compare the actual time a surgeon used to his requested block time. For a visual comparison, make a block template that lists each day and time that the surgeon requested and what he has actually used. Not surpris- ingly, you'll probably find that the surgeon has requested more time than he has used, or historically can use. Use this data to illustrate to the surgeons the difference in the time a surgeon has requested and the time he's likely to actually use. The goal is to mirror block time with time used (see "Drawing Up a Winning Schedule"). Prepare to negotiate. With your data in hand, show each surgeon what he has used and what he has requested. Negotiate with the doctors, with input from their schedulers, what days and times will work for them and for you. Not everybody can have OR2 at 0730 every Tuesday. Assure them their times are not set in stone and their block 4 2 3 1 J U L Y 2 0 1 7 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y. N E T • 2 9

Articles in this issue

Archives of this issue

view archives of Outpatient Surgery Magazine - Hip With the Times - July 2017 - Subscribe to Outpatient Surgery Magazine