Department managers in hospitals are under more pressure than ever to run an efficient, profitable operation. With Covid-19 wreaking havoc on hospital finances, each department is being leaned on to find efficiencies and eliminate waste in order to ensure a profitable operation for a post-Covid environment. One way that departments have sought to improve profitability is by generating more revenue without increasing the usage of fixed resources.
Many Endoscopy departments have undertaken efforts to increase their volume without significantly increasing costs in order to improve their bottom line. By increasing the number of cases using the same number of procedure rooms and the same staff, Endoscopy departments can quickly improve profitability. Recently a major academic medical center on the West Coast undertook a project to figure out how to increase their volume of Endoscopic Ultrasound (EUS) procedures that they were conducting weekly.
Prior to the project, the Endoscopy Department staff were continually disappointed about the number of EUS cases performed each week. Despite having the proper staff and procedure capacity, they often found themselves running behind and unable to complete their case load. As part of their EUS capacity optimization project, they analyzed the data coming out of their endoscope management software iRIScope. The department staff saw through the data that its EUS scopes were being over-used and reprocessing turnaround time was taking too long when compared to other endoscope models the department was using. This was causing a downstream effect of a reduced number of EUS procedures that could be completed day.
The conclusion of the project came with the recommendation that the Endoscopy department increase the number of EUS scopes that they kept in their fleet. By doing so, they would have enough scopes on hand to meet their case load while allowing the proper time for endoscopes to be reprocessed. Upon purchasing the new EUS scopes, the Endoscopy department was able to increase their EUS procedure volume by over 25% without significant investment. By making an upfront outlay in the tens of thousands of dollars, they are receiving an annual return on investment in the high six figures.
The power of reviewing real-time analytics coming from the hospital’s iRIScope system was the basis for the decision that is leading to an improvement of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the hospital’s bottom line. If your hospital relies on manual processes and paper trails to capture data around endoscope utilization and reprocessing, finding opportunities to improve your department’s operations will prove to be a challenge. iRIScope was introduced ensure hospitals follow a standardized reprocessing cycle for flexible endoscopes while automatically documenting each step along the way. In doing so, Endoscopy Departments gathers numerous data points that allow them to continuously monitor their workflows and make improvements to efficiency and patient safety, including producing volume improvements like this hospital did.
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