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- Location: Minnesota and Wisconsin
- Type: Regional IDN
- Facilities: 12
- EHR: Epic
Discover how Allina Health streamlines surgical processes to boost efficiency, enhance case volumes, and alleviate staff workload
Not only has Qventus given us stronger surgical services growth, it has provided us with an innovative tool for our OR teams and surgical clinics. Bill Evans, VP Surgical Services & Orthopedics
The Challenge
Allina Health was experiencing challenges that many perioperative departments are familiar with: block times were not being utilized anywhere near full capacity, newer surgeons without a block were struggling to find available time, and outdated, inefficient scheduling processes caused frustration among clinicians and scheduling staff.
By addressing these challenges, Allina was not only able to increase overall surgical volume, but also maximize utilization for robotic assets, improve staff satisfaction, and capitalize on new market opportunities.
I was looking for competitive advantage. If I'm using the same solution that everybody else is, what advantage do I get? I felt very comfortable that Qventus was going to be vastly superior to anything that our EHR was going to bolt on. Bill Evans, VP, Surgical Services & Orthopedics, Allina Health
The Qventus Solution
The Qventus Perioperative Solution automates every step of the scheduling process. The AI-powered software combines pattern recognition and predictive capabilities with principles of behavioral science to address all of Allina’s most serious scheduling problems:
Simplifying surgical scheduling. Qventus’ digital booking interface, TimeFinder, enables schedulers to easily find open time slots. The software determines the best-fit slots for any given case — factoring in things like day of week, time, the type of room and any special equipment needed, duration of procedure, and more — and offers a list of available slots that most closely fit the criteria. The clinic scheduler can book the time and submit the case request information with just a few clicks.
Improving block time utilization. Machine learning algorithms learn from a surgeon’s historical practice patterns and use that data to predict, up to a month in advance, time within each surgeon’s block that is unlikely to be used. When the system identifies a slot with a significantly high probability of going unused, it sends an automated “nudge” to the surgeon’s scheduler, requesting a release of the slot. To incentivize the release, the nudge includes a calculation of how much the release will improve the surgeon’s block utilization rate.
Proactively filling unused slots. Under a manual process, unused slots are often filled with the first available procedure, rather than the most appropriate one. The Qventus Perioperative Solution’s Available Time Outreach functionality analyzes the characteristics of available slots and matches them with surgeons’ predicted needs, and then offers the best-fit slots via email to the surgeon who’s most likely to use it and who also represents the highest value to Allina Health. The scheduler can accept or decline with a few clicks. If they decline, the system automatically moves to the next most likely candidate.
After implementation was complete, adoption was rapid: within the first three months, all of the hospital’s key surgeons — more than 130 — were preferentially booking their cases through Qventus.
The results have been impactful:
Simplifying surgical scheduling. Qventus’ digital booking interface, TimeFinder, enables schedulers to easily find open time slots. The software determines the best-fit slots for any given case — factoring in things like day of week, time, the type of room and any special equipment needed, duration of procedure, and more — and offers a list of available slots that most closely fit the criteria. The clinic scheduler can book the time and submit the case request information with just a few clicks.
Improving block time utilization. Machine learning algorithms learn from a surgeon’s historical practice patterns and use that data to predict, up to a month in advance, time within each surgeon’s block that is unlikely to be used. When the system identifies a slot with a significantly high probability of going unused, it sends an automated “nudge” to the surgeon’s scheduler, requesting a release of the slot. To incentivize the release, the nudge includes a calculation of how much the release will improve the surgeon’s block utilization rate.
Proactively filling unused slots. Under a manual process, unused slots are often filled with the first available procedure, rather than the most appropriate one. The Qventus Perioperative Solution’s Available Time Outreach functionality analyzes the characteristics of available slots and matches them with surgeons’ predicted needs, and then offers the best-fit slots via email to the surgeon who’s most likely to use it and who also represents the highest value to Allina Health. The scheduler can accept or decline with a few clicks. If they decline, the system automatically moves to the next most likely candidate.
After implementation was complete, adoption was rapid: within the first three months, all of the hospital’s key surgeons — more than 130 — were preferentially booking their cases through Qventus.
The results have been impactful:
-
3.5
additional cases per OR per month
-
100+
hours of block released early per month
-
36%
increase in robot utilization
-
79%
of time requests filled in under 60 mins
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