July 28 Webinar

Changing glove manufacturers can be a daunting task because surgeons and staff tend to have strong preferences about particular brands. A well-planned conversion, however, can overcome biases and benefit the bottom line. In this webinar, you will gain insight into value analysis, how to evaluate direct and indirect costs associated with glove changes, the importance of staff education, and the elements of a successful vendor partnership.

Surgical scheduling dictionaries are foundational to managing operative care. Unfortunately, they’re not “set-it-and-forget it” tools – they are constantly evolving due to industry code set updates and the changing nature of healthcare. Without a dedicated dictionary maintenance team, terms can quickly fall out of date and put your organization at risk for inaccurate reporting, substandard reimbursements, and more.

In this webinar, an expert panel will discuss the data needs of highly functional surgical services departments and the current shortcomings of electronic medical records (EMRs) in addressing those needs. You will learn how advanced analytics address EMR limitations and the benefits they provide for OR directors and their teams. Panelists will also suggest practices to get the most out of your data and explain how the data can be used to support planning and decision making.

Electronic health records (EHRs) have long been the source of information for decisions about how to allocate OR time, but EHRs lack the predictive and prescriptive capabilities that are needed to maximize OR utilization.

Traditional approaches for managing perioperative block allocation are rigid and often lead to underutilized ORs and unsatisfied surgeons. For multiple reasons, including manual processes, a lack of trusted data, limited visibility of available OR time, and more, OR utilization is effectively capped with these methods. In this webinar, learn how artificial intelligence and automated workflows can help organizations dynamically manage blocks and take their perioperative performance to the next level.

Managing operating rooms is hard, especially without access to reliable and readily available data. EHRs, built to capture information about patients and their care, do not provide the required level of data visibility or reliability needed to make daily, let alone strategic decisions about expensive healthcare assets such as operating rooms. Ensuring surgeons have optimal access, knowing exactly where and how to drive efficiency, and delivering value to surgeons, patients, and staff is a constant challenge. A challenge that requires greater visibility into available operating room time and key performance indicators.

Operating rooms grapple with time lost due to late starts, lengthy turnovers, underutilized blocks, unused blocks, and more. At the same time, many surgeons are clamoring for increased access to handle more cases. In this free webinar, Surgical Directions will present how to reclaim lost and wasted time that is holding back your OR. We will discuss how waste happens, how to measure it, and, critically, how to organize for success to convert the lost time into additional cases for your facility. With over 25 years of experience working at hundreds of hospitals and ASCs, the Surgical Directions team has the expertise to discuss ways to improve your financial performance and patient experience.

Occupational contact dermatitis (OCD), an inflammatory skin condition that occurs due to workplace exposure, can have long-term consequences, causing some healthcare workers to miss work and even change jobs. Nurses working in surgical wards and intensive care units are at the highest risk among healthcare workers. Surgical gloves are a common culprit of both irritant and allergic contact dermatitis in the healthcare setting. Glove-associated irritants include wet work, friction, air occlusion, excessive sweating, and poor hand hygiene. In addition, wearers may incur allergic contact dermatitis to chemical additives, especially accelerators that are added to speed up the manufacturing process, in both latex and synthetic gloves.

In today’s ever-changing COVID environment, you and your surgical team may have questions and concerns. Please join us for a discussion on infection prevention strategies with special focus given to urology and ureteroscope reprocessing practices. Presenter Cori Ofstead, a global infection prevention thought leader, will share her insights on COVID in urine, scope reprocessing effectiveness and risk of infection transmission in urology, and recommendations for minimizing risk to protect patients and staff alike. Key discussion points during this moderated webinar will include recent findings on ureteroscope reprocessing effectiveness and how to better manage this during COVID and beyond.

Unprecedented times present unique opportunities. We all know how the pandemic has disrupted perioperative and elective services. The pandemic is challenging us, but it has also presented us with an opportunity to evaluate many processes during the re-start of surgical service lines. As you re-deploy you will find many opportunities for improvement. You have the ability with the right approach to improve quality, staff and surgeon satisfaction, patient satisfaction, flow, and expense. How do you take advantage of this moment in time to identify the challenges that have plagued your OR for years, create logical plans, and finally implement solutions that work? During this free webinar, we will share Lean tools and methodologies that can help you attain a future state that is better than the pre-pandemic normal. You will learn straightforward Lean practices, tips, and tools that can help you improve perioperative services for the benefit of all. Discussion will also include case study examples of how Lean thinking can work to improve the effectiveness of your OR, every day, for everyone.

As hospitals resume their elective case schedule post COVID-19, there will be significant demand for capital equipment. Not only will case volume be higher in operating rooms, but also extended into more sites of care such as medical office buildings, ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), and specialty clinics. At the same time, healthcare leaders know that returning their organization to financial health means doing more with less, with fewer capital dollars available for new equipment purchases. Join us for this free webinar to learn about a step-by-step approach for implementing a program to share equipment between hospitals, an entirely new way to save that maximizes equipment utilization, eliminates rental fees, and reduces capital expenses. As elective surgeries are rescheduled, explore how an equipment sharing program can help expand service lines into new sites of care—without the corresponding capital costs—and address new requests for equipment.

Amid the coronavirus outbreak, most hospitals are cancelling or postponing elective surgeries. Addressing the large backlog to restore elective surgery caseload is a top post-pandemic priority of OR leaders. This will require careful planning and execution in the coming weeks and months to identify the backlog, manage block versus open time, open more time to perform more cases, and accommodate the pent-up volume given each hospital’s available resources (rooms, staffing, locations). Join us for this free webinar as industry experts provide a set of tools and a step-by-step approach as part of model for successfully managing and restoring elective surgery caseload. Attendees will learn how to access the model for use at their institutions and be able to ask questions following the presentation.

There are many situations that can cause crisis in the OR. We are living through one of them now with COVID-19. This webinar outlines the assessment that a site would need to evaluate resources and gaps, how to handle the change in daily operations, and proactive management of patients for the elective surgical recovery period. We will also discuss the critical need for partnership with physicians and patients to keep communication lines open. Join this webinar to hear and discuss effective strategies for managing your OR, regardless of the crisis being confronted. We will share leading practices and tools that can help you keep your department running effectively and efficiently, with emphasis on recovery from the COVID-19 crisis

Despite advances to optimize infection prevention, the burden of surgical site infections (SSIs) still remains a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. SSIs are the most costly hospital-associated infection in hospitalized patients, totaling 1.5 million each year. Targeting SSI prevention is a national priority. This webinar will provide an overview of the pathogenesis, classification, and management of SSIs. Associated risk factors and current statistics regarding SSIs will also be reviewed. The economic impact on patients and institutions, as well as the impact of SSIs on quality of care and hospital reimbursement, will be discussed together with components of a successful SSI reduction program.

Despite all the attention given to perioperative pressure injuries, a lack of understanding of contributing risk factors and appropriate prevention measures persists. In fact, according to the National Health Care Quality Report, 60,000 patients die annually related to complications from pressure injuries. Join us for this free webinar, where Cassendra A. Munro will discuss correct application of the Munro Scale© risk assessment instrument, a simple method designed to help perioperative nurses with identification of patient-specific and perioperative risk factors related to pressure injury.

Culture is commonly a significant barrier to change in hospital and surgical center ORs. Today’s OR leaders know that overcoming this barrier demands appropriate and thoughtful staff engagement in order to create buy-in and support for changes. Join this webinar to learn effective tips and tricks for creating a culture that is supportive of change. Find out how to leverage best-practice ideas to create a governance structure to align leaders, to build performance dashboards that effectively engage and incentivize staff, to execute routine operational tactics that keep everyone on the same page, and more!

In ORs across the country, perioperative personnel are tasked with doing more with less resources. Join us for this free webinar, where you’ll find out how to identify and adopt protocols, processes, and parameters that improve overall efficiencies in your OR every day. Simple yet strategic modifications can yield significant improvement and translate into real time savings for every case.

Join us for this free webinar you’ll learn about decision-making strategies to take the right action when right-sizing blocks, the benefits of leveraging mobile and cloud technologies to replace manual request and release processes, and how objective and timely “single source of truth” metrics help surgeons and administrative leaders improve OR performance.

Join us for this free webinar where you will learn about the unique challenges associated with managing heat stress in the OR. You’ll find out the key factors contributing to the occurrence of heat stress in the perioperative environment, its effects on OR staff performance, and methods of reducing heat stress in the OR.