A major healthcare provider in USA, partnered with Proximie to analyze perioperative operations and uncover inefficiencies in surgical workflows. By analyzing OR device and ambient video data, the study identified opportunities to enhance efficiency, improve workflows for practitioners, achieve better outcomes for patients and unlock significant economic gains.
Proximie is an advanced surgical data capture and analysis platform that integrates real-time video with medical device data. Its system-agnostic, cloud-based technology provides a holistic view of operating room (OR) performance, enabling providers to identify inefficiencies, standardize workflows, and drive measurable improvements in surgical outcomes.
The study analyzed 700+ hours of video and 10,000+ data points across three areas of specialism. The analysis revealed significant non-clinical variations and delays, such as:
24% of observed total OR time, or an average of 38 minutes per procedure, provided opportunities to cut overall OR time outside of actual surgery taking place in vascular procedures.
Time from close of surgery to wheels out varying from five minutes to 12 minutes in endoscopy. 10% of procedures took longer than 16 minutes to start compared to a mean of under 12 minutes.
Assessing the causes of these variations led to the building simulation models for optimization in three areas:
Observations showed delays of up to 16 minutes being caused by staff having to search for or retrieve missing items in poorly organized case carts; missing materials caused idle times of up to six minutes before disinfection could begin in some vascular procedures.
Optimization opportunity: Cutting delays between wheels-in and intubation, and from patient prep to first incision, by up to 22 minutes.
Patient and material preparations were often carried out as separate tasks with very little communication between teams. This contributed to notable idle times after the patient arrived in the OR.
Optimization opportunity: Synchronization could reduce OR time by 15 minutes (12.5% of a two-hour surgery) in bariatric surgery, and cut time from prep end to incision by 34% and total OR time by 28% in vascular procedures.
Inefficient cleaning and sterilization protocols delayed turnaround times by an average of six minutes. The data showed that longer turnovers correlate with delays in anesthesia and intubation in the next procedure, reducing peak OR utilization.
Optimization opportunity: Efficient turnover sets the stage for smooth operations, preventing inefficiencies from snowballing. For every 10 minute reduction in turnover time, anesthesia times in the next procedure are cut by two minutes.
The simulations showed that full use of the 24% optimization opportunity would allow each OR to accommodate one additional procedure per day.
For the purposes of estimating economic impact, we used a conservative partial utilization figure of three additional procedures per week per OR. Multiplied across 60 ORs, and based on an average $10,000 reimbursement per procedure, this would give:
