The blueprint to optimised surgical performance: a view from inside the OR

During a series of interviews with key stakeholders from US and UK healthcare systems, participants revealed significant gaps in data that could help paint a picture of surgical performance. This rich tapestry of missing data is currently falling by the wayside and yet it could be the blueprint to help optimise surgical best practice, and ultimately save patients' lives. A blueprint that Proximie is writing.

"This rich tapestry of missing data is currently falling by the wayside and yet it could be the blueprint to help optimise surgical best practice, and ultimately save patients' lives. A blueprint that Proximie is writing."

The once analogue environment of the operating room is being reimagined by Proximie into a data-driven, digitally-connected space that captures the one source of truth needed to unlock improved productivity, better patient safety and enhanced workforce retention and education. At a time when healthcare systems are facing significant challenges, what can healthcare teams do to do more with less? The answer is simple; seamlessly integrate Proximie into your clinical pathway to enable the easy and routine collection of pre, intra and postoperative surgical data, to provide teams with access to high-quality learnings and an objective record of what happened, allowing surgeons of all levels to learn from procedures that have gone well and those that have not.

“At a time when healthcare systems are facing significant challenges, what can healthcare teams do to do less with more? The answer is simple; seamlessly integrate Proximie into your clinical pathway…”

Proximie’s CEO and Founder, Dr. Nadine Hachach-Haram, is a frontline surgeon who understands the nuanced challenges that are facing healthcare teams each and every day. Understanding the view of our customers is integral. To that end, we conducted a series of interviews with senior healthcare stakeholders not familiar with Proximie.

Our calculations, based on implementing Proximie in a hospital we partnered with, is that this site could be making potential efficiency savings of £3.4m by using our platform. Hospital OR managers we spoke to identified a number of key areas in which the data gathered and insights made possible by Proximie add value to the OR and augment their abilities as a team. Here we take a look at some of the themes that emerged from these discussions.

Identifying trends

The data Proximie gathers on procedural time, turnaround time, surgical checklist compliance, staff presence and door open rate provides a tremendous amount of detailed information that makes it possible to pinpoint patterns and trends that may be having a negative, or indeed positive, impact on efficiency and outcomes. Augmenting hospital OR managers’ ability to identify if and when procedures are not starting on time makes it possible to hone in on whether this is happening because, for example, equipment is not where it needs to be.

Proximie’s technology makes it easier than ever before to zero in on trends that might otherwise go unnoticed - and being made aware of such patterns is the first step towards being able to formulate a solution.

Understanding variation

Respondents in our interviews were particularly keen to quantify and understand variation between different procedures, and between hospitals in their system or location. This would make it possible for hospital management to:

• Provide consistent care to all patients, limiting variation.
• Understand how their hospital compares to others.
• Aim for a 5-star rating by addressing areas in which they do not perform as well as other hospitals.
• Attract better staff, as efficiency is a key selling point for physicians.

Trend and workflow analysis

The powerful analytical tools provided by Proximie empowers hospital management to determine the causes of trends and workflow patterns that are detrimental to optimal OR performance, making it easy to discern key bottlenecks in workflow.

“The powerful analytical tools provided by Proximie empower hospital OR managers to determine the causes of trends and workflow patterns that are detrimental to optimal OR performance, making it easy to discern key bottlenecks in workflow.”

By recording every action and movement in the OR, Proximie’s video archives provide accurate and timely data retrieval that enables the seamless analysis of all key time periods during a surgical encounter, thereby lending itself to a more systematic approach to strategic reform. Existing data to identify areas of improvement (e.g. manual records of procedural time) do not allow this. During a current hospital pilot with Proximie, the manually collected data from the EPR was inaccurate by over two minutes in 59% of metrics compared to footage obtained from Proximie.

The depth of objective data provided by Proximie allows the seamless identification of trends and a deeper understanding of variation in care that can ultimately improve OR efficiency.