Every hour on an operating room’s schedule is booked. Why does the room still stand empty?
A block holds the room for one team whether or not that team has a patient for it. A release rule takes back the empty time at a set deadline, so another team can use it.
Count used time separately from booked time.
Becausea block reserves an operating room, an MRI scanner or a radiation treatment machine for one team at a set time. The schedule shows it as taken even when it sits empty. Block utilization divides the minutes used by the minutes allocated.
Treat an empty hour as lost.
Becausethe time of a room or a machine cannot be stored. An hour the scanner stands idle on Tuesday cannot be added to Wednesday.
Work an example.
Becausethe gap is easy to miss when every slot on the schedule carries a name. Take a room open 40 hours a week and blocked to one team, which uses 28. The room is fully booked and 70% used. Twelve hours a week stand empty.
Release what is still empty at a deadline.
Becausethe team that holds the block knows its own patients best, so it keeps first claim. After the deadline the time goes to teams with patients waiting. Many rules release time 72 hours before the day, and some a week before.
Set the deadline by how late each kind of work is booked.
Becauseurgent cases arrive late. A study at one hospital found that vascular surgeons booked more cases inside 48 hours than any other division. A 72-hour rule releases the time before those cases are known.
Another way
Give each team the hours it uses, and open the rest to everyone from the start.
Becausea team that uses 28 hours a week rarely needs 40 held for it. A study of two surgical suites found that the release deadline made little difference to efficiency, and its authors advised getting the allocation right first.
Check
Follow the example’s 40 hours through a 72-hour release. Suppose the team booked its 28 hours before the deadline, so all 12 empty hours are released, and other teams fill 6. Used time rises from 28 to 34 hours, or from 70% to 85%, in the same room with the same staff. The team used 28 hours, other teams 6, and 6 stayed empty, which makes 40.
KeepBooked is a promise. Used is a patient.