Seemingly small changes can make a huge difference. While a community hospital may engage in an ongoing and successful effort to improve efficiency, all it takes is one disparate scheduling system to compromise and damage the outcome. Similarly, all it takes is one right move to put the efficiency effort back on track.

Problem

Lowell General Hospital in Lowell, MA is a 200-bed independent hospital serving residents of Greater Lowell, a suburb of Boston. Each year, our surgical services department performs more than 8,000 procedures in an 11-room, hospital-based surgical suite and a three-room ambulatory surgery center.

The surgery department used a disparate standalone scheduling system that did not integrate with the hospital’s main system. Our staff scheduled appointments with doctors’ offices over the phone and entered bookings into the system. In many cases, we received inaccurate information from the admitting doctor’s office, but because we weren’t connected to the hospital’s main system and because our system didn’t require any specific information or flag errors, surgical bookings were scheduled without detailed information about patients’ conditions or the procedures required.

In short, our staff learned to behave as if gathering patient information during the scheduling process was not a priority but getting the room booked was. On many occasions, they even created generic names for patients and added them to the system with no clinical or surgical details–all to expedite a faster transaction and to book operating space for the surgeon involved.