Dr. Patrick McGill, chief transformation officer of the Indianapolis Community Health Network, Transformation Virtual Summit Hosted by LeanTaaS.
For many surgeons, the operating room schedule is their last bastion of autonomy, and they are reluctant to relinquish control of it. despite this, Health system speakers at the roundtable said they are starting to see improvements in operational efficiency after applying machine learning analytics to operating room scheduling. In other words, changes are needed, whether surgeons like it or not, although their concerns can be eased.
Given the many challenges facing health systems — from increased labor costs to material shortages to reimbursement issues — Dr. McGill said it was critical for hospitals to incorporate machine learning into their overall schedules sooner rather than later.
He said he avoided surgeons’ fear of giving up autonomy, reassuring them that they would not lose control of their schedules, but to make subtle adjustments so that more patients could receive timely, often life-saving procedures.
In advising health system leaders trying to convince their executives to adopt scheduling analytics, Dr. McGill also noted that the technology illustrates new patient preferences brought on by consumerism. Patients want better access and more timely care, and scheduling analytics can optimize OR time utilization.
Aaron Miri, chief digital and information officer at Jacksonville-based Baptist Health, also encouraged health system leaders to be optimistic about scheduling analytics in executive meetings. He argues that the widespread belief that EHRs can perform quality scheduling optimizations is a misunderstanding.
“Health systems have invested heavily in electronic health records, but these health records are just data silos,” he told the roundtable. “They’re not very smart in any way. I’m not disparaging – that’s not what they were designed for.”
Both Baptist Health and Community Health Network use LeanTaaS as their scheduling optimization partner. In an interview with MedCity News in May, CEO Mohan Giridharadas said, Say While EHRs can serve as excellent repositories for patient data, they simply don’t have the level of AI sophistication built in, and the AI needed to optimize will yield measurable results year over year.
LeanTaaS and its competitors, including Qventus and XSOLIS, sell software-as-a-service designed to unlock capabilities for healthcare providers.
Drs McGill and Miri said adopting the service was not a challenge for their health system, as LeanTaaS helped them build a machine learning model that had been battle-tested with other providers.
Community Health Network adopted LeanTaaS technology in April. Since then, Dr. McGill said the software has opened 1,200 to 1,500 OR hours, and that number is expected to grow as more surgeons become more supportive.
Baptist Health implemented the technology in 2019, and Miri said the health system has an average of 70 percent active utilization across all operating rooms. To date, Baptist Health has delivered an 11 percent return on investment during the partnership, he added.
In advocating the use of scheduling optimization software among C-level managers, health system technology leaders should highlight the technology’s proven ability to increase capacity and therefore revenue, Miri said. If the health system doesn’t want to adopt it, he said the group “leaves money on the table.”
Image: Daevich Mikalai, Getty Images
