Not only do strategic predictive planning services give hospitals added control to manage their costs, they also make for a more organized operating room. Data analytics, especially predictive analytics that harnesses the power of big data to come up with likely scenarios, helps health care services operate more efficiently and effectively, Healthcare Finance reported.
Two hospital chief financial officers lauded the technology for making their institutions' transitions from a fee-for-service system to a form of value-based care easy. Predictive analytics allows health care systems to keep better track of patient health so no one falls through the cracks. The software solution also upgrades the entire OR room scheduling process for doctors and hospital administrators.
"A better schedule means more efficient OR usage."
Finding a better schedule
Staffing an OR is not just time consuming but costly, according to TechTarget. Hospitals have a limited number of ORs, with many surgeons competing for the same space. In fact, underutilizing an OR isn't cost effective either.
Scheduling times that work for patients, doctors and nurses aren't the only difficult process. Reserving an OR room requires hospitals to follow a number of different procedures and maintain a good paper trail of patient surgery files. Keeping track of and making sense of all this information is both tedious and slow. Some hospital directors actually try to crunch the numbers themselves with the use of spreadsheets.
Enabling better usage
Ensuring doctors and patients get as much use out of a hospital's OR as possible is a head-spinning task, but using predictive analytics tools streamlines the process. Surgeons must take into account the type of procedure needed and the amount of time it will take in order to book an OR room. However, predictive analytics solutions can crunch the numbers as a form of triage by showing hospital administrators the elective surgeries that can wait and the major, life-saving ones that must take precedence.
A better schedule means more efficient OR usage and, therefore, a hospital can always be on top of which team of doctors and nurses are using the room at any given time. With this knowledge, a health care facility can arrange for more surgeries if need be which can bring more money into the hospital. Putting predictive analytics to use also enhances patient experience. As hospitals have better control over their schedules, patients have faster access to necessary surgeries without waiting for their doctor to let them know when an OR is available.
