Abstract

Objective:To evaluate the effects of health information technology systems integration on perioperative efficiency by investigating if automated notifications of patient arrival to the operating room leads to decreased time to induction by anesthesiologists.Methods:We performed a retrospective chart review of all outpatient and short-stay patients who received General Anesthesia at our institution between July 1, 2017 and June 30, 2018.Time was used as a measure of efficiency between the two comparison groups.The two comparison groups were as follows:Group 1: Pre-event notification implementation (July 1, 2017-Dec 31, 2017)Group 2: Post-event notification implementation (Jan 1, 2018 – June 30, 2018)In this study, our primary outcome measure duration (DUR) was collected from patient electronic medical records:DUR: Time (duration in minutes) between anesthesia start and induction of anesthesia, exclusively for first case of the day.Results:Duration of induction was significantly shorter post-event notification implementation compared to pre-event implementation (median duration, 6 min vs 7 min; p=0.001).Conclusion:We demonstrate that health information technology systems integration improves perioperative efficiency of anesthesiologists at our institution. Further investigation is warranted to provide data to support provider buy-in and greater uptake and implementation of these systems to enhance patient care and coordination in the healthcare setting.

Highlights

  • Health information technology (IT) systems have evolved to highly sophisticated levels in recent years

  • Because our institution’s Main Campus does not have Real-time locating system (RTLS) technology, we initially investigated if there was a difference in efficiency between anesthesiologists who have access to RTLS and anesthesiologists who do not

  • For our primary outcome measure, the duration between anesthesia start time and initiation of induction was shorter in the post-implementation group compared to the pre-implementation group; the median (25th, 75th percentile) of the duration was 7.0 minutes (5.0, 9.0) pre-event notification implementation vs 6.0 minutes (5.0, 8.0) post-event notification (p =0.001, Table 1)

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Summary

Introduction

Health information technology (IT) systems have evolved to highly sophisticated levels in recent years. Coordination of care for patients is imperative in modern medicine, and we can leverage health IT systems such as the electronic medical record and other patient and provider-centered technologies to improve upon patient care and coordination in our healthcare system. Healthcare facilities in the United States use a variety of advanced technologies with the goal of improving efficiency and workflow[2,3]. The concentrated amount of highly specialized physicians and state of the art equipment and technology in current operating rooms renders the OR as the most expensive unit in a hospital with each minute of OR time valued between $30-80 [5,6,7]

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