Dec 26, 2024

Benchmarking in Healthcare: Transforming OR Performance

Surgical Safety Technologies

BENCHMARKING

Technology and surgical complexity continue to evolve in modern operating rooms, amidst ever-increasing pressure to deliver safe, high-quality surgical care—all while maintaining efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Benchmarking has emerged as a crucial tool for achieving these goals, especially when powered by advanced technologies that capture and analyze OR data in real-time. This strategic process helps surgical departments assess their performance against peer institutions and industry standards, providing actionable insights for improvement.

In this blog, we will discuss:

The evolution of benchmarking in healthcare
Healthcare benchmarking in surgical delivery, including surgical clinical outcomes, surgical patient experience, OR financial performance, and surgical quality measures
Driving benchmarking initiatives with the Surgical Safety Network

The Evolution of Benchmarking in Healthcare

Traditional healthcare benchmarking relied heavily on manual data collection, retrospective analysis, and self-reported outcomes. Today's advanced surgical safety technologies have transformed this landscape, capturing every detail of the surgical environment and turning raw data into actionable, objective insights to drive performance improvement. This technological evolution allows surgical departments to:

Capture the entire surgical experience including intracorporeal and extracorporeal data
Analyze surgical techniques and team dynamics objectively
Compare performance across procedures and institutions
Identify improvement opportunities proactively
Capture stellar team performance and share best practices visually with surgical staff
Implement data-driven safety protocols

Healthcare Benchmarking in Surgical Care Delivery

Benchmarking is a critical tool for improving performance across various surgical domains, including clinical outcomes, patient experience, financial performance, and quality metrics. Below are key areas of benchmarking in healthcare that are relevant to surgery departments.

#1 Benchmarking in Healthcare: Surgical Clinical Outcomes

Clinical outcomes form the foundation of surgical quality measurement. Modern surgical safety platforms enable detailed tracking and analysis of:

Surgical Site Infection Rates: Compare infection rates across procedure types and identify correlations with specific intraoperative factors
30-day Post-surgical Mortality: Track risk-adjusted mortality rates and analyze contributing factors
Return to OR Rates: Monitor unplanned returns and identify preventable causes
Post-operative Complications: Track complications by procedure type and severity
Length of Stay Variations: Compare recovery times against expected pathways
Case Duration Analysis: Benchmark procedure times while accounting for complexity
OR Turnover Efficiency: Monitor room preparation and transition times

#2 Benchmarking in Healthcare: Surgical Patient Experience

Patient experience metrics have become increasingly important in surgical care delivery. Advanced platforms help track:

Patient Wait Times for Surgical Procedures: Track the number of days/weeks surgeons are scheduling out
Surgical Scheduling Efficiency: Track on-time starts and schedule adherence
Communication Effectiveness: Track team-patient communication quality

#3 Benchmarking in Healthcare: OR Financial Performance

Financial sustainability requires detailed understanding of OR operations. Modern platforms provide insights into:

Operating Room Utilization: Track block time usage and idle time
Staff Overtime Patterns: Monitor staffing efficiency and overtime trends
Room Turnover and Idle Time: Evaluate opportunities to compress activities between cases to increase utilization or reduce overtime
Schedule Capacity: Monitor utilization, turnover, and idle time to identify opportunities to add cases and adjust block availability
Resource Utilization: Track equipment and supply usage patterns
Staff Burnout and Subsequent Turnover: Monitor patient flow and schedule optimization opportunities to reduce stress and unexpected overtime

#4 Benchmarking in Healthcare: Surgical Quality Measures

Quality measures specific to surgical care help ensure consistent, safe practice:

Safety Checklist Compliance: Monitor adherence to surgical safety protocols
Time-out Effectiveness: Track completion and quality of surgical time-outs
Team Communication: Assess communication patterns during procedures
Equipment Safety: Monitor equipment-related events and near-misses
Emergency Response: Evaluate teamwork in response to intraoperative emergencies
Protocol Adherence: Monitor compliance with evidence-based guidelines
Never Events and Near Misses: Evaluate circumstances that enabled the occurrence of events such as retained surgical items, wrong site surgeries, etc.

Driving Benchmarking Initiatives with the Surgical Safety Network

Healthcare organizations that use the Black Box Platform™¹ become members of the Surgical Safety Network.² Through this network, individuals can:

Benchmark surgical safety metrics within their organization and against other leading institutions within the Surgical Safety Network to promote transparency and accelerate quality improvement.
Participate in year-round quality improvement activities, including the annual summit and multi-disciplinary working groups, where best practices are shared, and industry thought leaders collaborate.
Access an ongoing forum for continuous, data-driven optimization.

Technology-enabled benchmarking in healthcare represents a powerful tool for improving surgical safety, efficiency, and outcomes. Organizations can drive continuous improvement in their operating rooms while contributing to the advancement of surgical care as a whole by leveraging advanced platforms and participating in surgical safety networks.

Ready to transform your benchmarking capabilities? Contact us³ to learn more.