How The State of Your Data Can Contribute to the Success or Failure of Your OR.
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In today’s “call out” culture, when hospitals are finding themselves on the news for device errors, the data that supports your surgical assets better be accurate. And useful. And understood by all the departments that support this complex unit—so that everyone and everything is operating in beautiful rhythm and harmony.
But odds are…it’s not.
When surgical trays don’t get to the OR on time and don’t contain the specified instruments, surgeons get mad. And anesthetized patients wait on gurneys. And OR coordinators yell at SPD over the phone. And the whole thing turns into a stressful, expensive, and potentially litigious, mosh pit.
Clean Data Keeps Your OR in Step.
Clean data is your surgical inventory standardized and aligned across all departments and software systems. So the OR is moving in concert with SPD, who is grooving with supply chain, who is completely in sync with the suppliers (Cha cha cha). It ensures everyone is speaking the same language, increasing the quality of communication between departments—and often, mending the rifts that have developed over time. Clean data can save time, human resources, money and, potentially, lives.
Clean Data Creates a Single, Overarching Naming Structure.
How many different names do you have for forceps in your preference cards? We’d estimate at least a dozen. And how often does someone, at some point in the tray assembly process pull the wrong forceps based on a vague description? Cue the angry phone calls, screaming surgeons and an anesthetized patient waiting on the table. The delicate dance, where parts are supposed to be moving in beautiful, choreographed efficiency, falls apart. Clean data creates a single, comprehensive item master that every department can access and employ to keep the dance going.
Clean Data Increases the Quality of Communication.
Synchronized data across your systems opens up opportunities for streamlining efforts to get the right instruments in the right trays and those trays in the right place at the right time. Clean data offers enhanced insight into inventory supply and demand and a greater transparency of what you have and what you need to adequately support surgery. It can also relieve the friction between departments, and, in some instances, it can even rebuild the damaged trust between departments.
Clean Data Saves Time. And Money. And Your Hospital’s Reputation.
We can’t claim that clean data saves lives, but it certainly aids the people working hard to do so. Clean data can save thousands of hours of potential productivity in the OR and across your entire hospital/system. It can help you better stock your inventory. It can help you control costs. And it can help you aggregate critical performance metrics in order to manage assets in a fraction of the time and effort.
Clean Data Can Lead to an OR Operating in in Harmony.
Imagine an OR performing in harmonious rhythm; instruments are moving, staff are moving, patients are moving, surgeons are moving— all in sync. Now imagine a version of that actually working in your OR. The first step is clean data. You can enjoy the significant and sustainable benefits of clean data, like:
● A universal naming structure to help avoid confusion and error.
● Clearer communication between departments to streamline processes and repair departmental rifts.
● Less effort, less time, less cost. More harmony, more efficiency, more profit.
It Takes the Right Partner.
Of course, you can clean your own data. But you may not be able to achieve and sustain the results Ascendco has for dozens of major hospital systems across the country. Our services provide enormous savings in time, money and stress that clean data can deliver—so your OR, SPD, Supply Chain and Suppliers move together in one elegant, cohesive performance.
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Brian Reed is Co-Founder and CEO of Ascendco in Chicago. He has over 15 years of experience with leading surgical device manufacturers in Europe and has been a trusted advisor to the most progressive health care systems in the U.S. and to hospitals around the world. Outfitting surgery departments with superior data, analytics, and software, Ascendco is helping providers better manage their most complex assets and helping people work together to reach new heights.