Operating room effectiveness: a lean health-care performance indicator

Abstract

Purpose Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is a performance indicator that is been used to measure manufacturing productivity. The purpose of this paper is to propose the operating room effectiveness for hospital operating rooms (ORs), adapted from the OEE, to measure performance and identify losses based on lean health-care principles. Design/methodology/approach The present study is an exploratory, descriptive and applied research work. Literature review, documents of the hospital, observation and interviews with employees of a large university hospital in southern Brazil were analyzed to organize the proposed effectiveness indicator. After that, historical data of the ORs was collected and the usefulness of the indicator was analyzed. The indicator was applied for 10 months and validated with an expert committee from the hospital. Findings The present study describes an adaptation of a performance indicator to ORs of hospitals, allowing to classify its types of operational losses in a lean health-care context. The application of this indicator and the development of improvement actions to a university hospital, resulted in operational efficiency gains of 12 per cent and estimated annual savings of US$400,000. Practical implications ORs are a critical service for hospitals. This paper presents a new way to measure the performance of ORs and identify their main types of wastes. It also shows how to implement it and the potential gains of its application. The main research limitations are related to technical analysis of care data from doctors and nurses involved. Originality/value This paper fulfills the need to study how ORs performance can be measured and its operational wastes can be identified. In addition, this paper classifies the planning, performance and quality related losses, which can be used by researchers and practitioners to improve the performance of operation rooms.

A lean approach to healthcare management using multi criteria decision making

“…Waiting by patients at various stages is a major concern for leanness as it directly impacts patient satisfaction and is most frequently occurring in the hospitals. [ 1 , 67 ]. Further, waiting for the resources in the healthcare systems plays a vital role as it may reduce service quality and system efficiency [ 35 ].…”

“…Healthcare inventory management is vital in managing system quality and measuring the delivery process’s performance. [ 32 , 67 ].…”

Quality Assurance for Operating Room Illumination through Lean Six Sigma

“…They claimed that the three largest time components in an operation have been found as a surgeon, preparation, and turnover times. Souza et al (2020) proposed that the effectiveness of ORs can be structured as the overall equipment effectiveness, to assess performance and reveal losses based on lean healthcare objectives.…”

Improving hospital operations management to reduce ineffective medical appointments

“…Anyhow, the waste reduction approach can be applied independently in order to make progress in terms of organizational culture with the aim of implementing the Lean philosophy or even with the intention of maximizing the use of available resources. In this sense, Souza et al (2020) emphasize the Lean connection with operations management for issues, such as ensuring patient flow. Vieira et al (2020) also highlight the importance of managing health operations to ensure continuous improvement cycles.…”