Increasing On-Time Starts of Neurology Procedures in Interventional Radiology

Abstract

The first scheduled surgical or diagnostic procedure of the day sets the tone for the entire daily operating room (OR) schedule. Delayed first procedures of the day result in subsequent delays, affecting productivity, staffing, and most importantly, patient care.Factors that impact the start of the first scheduled case, include late patient arrival, lack of staffing, and incomplete pertinent laboratory results. Subsequently, this may lead to cancelations and will directly affect the patient’s satisfaction with the process. Cases running in procedural rooms past their scheduled end times result in extra pay for staff, while canceled cases lead to lost revenue; these expenses are consequences of inefficiency. It is hard to determine the financial ramifications of late starts to an organization because overhead facility costs and staff salaries are multifactorial and specific to the setting. This quality improvement (QI) project evaluated the effectiveness of a change in shift start time for nurses as a solution to improving on-time starts by measuring first case on-time starts and the patient and radiology team satisfaction scores.