Laverne General Hospital: The Orthopedic Center |
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Intermediate |
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$9.00
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PeriOptimum is a valuable tool that we use today and plan to use in the
new Orthopedic Center to improve the utilization of surgical operating
rooms for orthopedic patients, reduce the time a patient is in surgery,
and greatly enhance physician and patient satisfaction
The speaker was Melissa McNamara, Chief Operating Officer of
Laverne General Hospital (LGH), and the person charged with overseeing
the implementation of Laverne’s Orthopedic Center, one of five centers
that were considered service lines with bottom-line responsibility
within the hospital.
The Orthopedics Center represented an important strategic move for
Laverne. Not only did it mean that the hospital would be in closer
partnership with its surgeons, five of whom were on the Center’s
steering committee, along with an anesthesiologist, but, in many
respects, the center was a move toward greater use of a team approach
in the hospital’s operating rooms. Although the hospital was counting
on PeriOptimum (PO) to be the catalyst for the whole effort, it was
clear to many senior managers that PO needed to be supported with a
solid complement of management systems. In the words of Ms. McNamara:
We needed to make a move in orthopedics. The product line is in
demand, and a lot of procedures can now be done in an outpatient
setting, which makes it easy for the for-profit folks to steal business
from us. There’s also a revolution in joint care. What was once a
5-day hospital stay with a 6-week recovery period is now a 1-day stay
with a 6-day recovery period.
She continued:
The orthopedic surgeons are also changing. Some now want to do
eight cases a day, although it’s hard to predict the OR time needed for
each case. In this regard, PeriOptimum has led to a lot of shakeups in
the hospital. We have been able to better manage OR block time
assignments2 and have a good sense of who uses a block effectively and
who does not. We’ve also established the OR Governance Committee as a
key decision-making group to deal with OR issues. What we’ve not done
so far is to decide if a team approach to the ORs is a workable idea.
So the Ortho Center will play that role. Each team will consist of a
surgeon, an anesthesiologist, an RN [registered nurse], an assistant,
and a technician. The goal is to have them learn to work cohesively to
improve throughput in the ORs without, of course, jeopardizing quality.
BACKGROUND
LGH opened in 1893 as a three-story brick residence with a mission
to deliver the best possible care to anyone in need, regardless of
ability to pay. Ten years later, LGH established a nurses training
school. The institution grew steadily over the next hundred years. In
1992, it finished construction on its “Health Campus,” an outpatient
center with physicians’ offices, lab and testing facilities, and
ambulatory surgery. In 2000, it opened the Women and Babies Hospital,
an attractive and inviting facility adjacent to the Health Campus.
During the summer of 2003, ground was broken for the Orthopedic Center,
a multi-million dollar, state-of-the-art facility, due to be opened in
November 2004.
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