Case Study - Sheba Medical Center Operating Rooms
Overview
The Sheba Medical Center is the most comprehensive medical center in the Middle East, as well as being a major medical-scientific research powerhouse that collaborates internationally with the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. Sheba is also a leading global center for medical education, recently acknowledged by Newsweek Magazine as one of the ten best hospitals in the world.
The Surgery Department at Sheba Medical Center includes 39 operating rooms across five sites, and performs around 200 operations every day.
Sheba has been a long-time Q-nomy client and early adopter of its most advanced modules. In 2020, the medical center chose to implement Q-nomy’s new Operating Room Scheduling and Patient Flow Management solution.
The Challenge
The OR management at Sheba was facing a number of challenges, common to most hospitals’ surgery departments:
- Insufficient or incorrect preparation of patients for surgery
- Late arrival of patients for surgery
- Delays between surgeries as surgical teams wait for cleaners, and then as teams wait to be notified of cleaning completion
- Handling surgeries that need to be postponed in favor of more urgent cases
The combined impact of these challenges reduces the utilization of the OR’s already-limited resources and prevents the department from reaching its full capacity. In addition, the lack of available real-time data puts extra stress on OR management as they struggle to keep track of patients, priorities, and staff.
The Solution
Q-nomy provided Sheba with a solution based on the Q-Flow platform already at work in the hospital. The main components of the solution are:
- Q-Flow OR Planner, which manages the different stages of surgery scheduling and planning
- Q-Flow OR Flow, which manages the complete patient journey and workflow on the day of surgery
The solution further ensures management, medical and other staff are constantly updated with relevant information and keeping track of their tasks, using automated text messages, dashboards, and access to reports.
The Results
The Q-Flow solution proved to be a major success and had a significant positive effect on surgical procedures and workflow efficiency. Some of the KPIs improved include:
- Higher utilization of rooms and resources
- Fewer surgeries postponed at the last minute
- Less time wasted between operations.
“I saw a great difference since the Q-Flow system was put to use in the OR,” said Dr. Dina Orkin, director of Sheba Medical Center’s operating rooms. “The software made it possible to optimize the allocation of personnel and the preparation of patients for surgery, whether urgent or elective.”
Dr. Orkin points out a few examples of how Q-Flow helps her resolve everyday challenges in the department.
- A surgical team had to be isolated, which meant closing one operating theater. This would normally lead to postponing all surgeries assigned to that team. However, the transparency and visualization of data provided by Q-Flow enabled patients to be re-assigned to other teams and available rooms, saving three operations from being postponed. This practice can prevents hundreds of surgery deferrals every year.
- On the evening before planned surgery, Q-Flow provided an early warning of patient preparations not being completed. This alert allowed staff to complete the preparation and prevented a last-minute postponement.
- Q-Flow dashboard assists her in making decisions on real-time reassignment and allocation of rooms and resources. This enables a higher level of resource utilization than ever before.
- The flow of patients arriving for urgent surgery used to be difficult to track, leading to frequent arguments over priorities if a number of urgent patients were waiting. Now, Q-Flow tracks urgent cases just like scheduled ones, enabling their effective management.
Dr. Orkin, director of operating rooms: "Q-Flow streamlines patient throughput, and enables the optimal management of operating rooms where resources are limited."
See the system in action, in this video recently shot at Sheba hospital:
