Seize the Moment: Revamp Your Surgeon Preference
Cards for Enhanced Efficiency
Ethan Nobbs 10/1/2023
In healthcare, maintaining a consistent workflow is indispensable to success. This
is particularly crucial in the surgical setting, where procedure durations directly
impact patient outcomes and the capacity to serve more patients daily. Surgeon
preference cards are a primary tool in maintaining organization and efficiency for
surgical teams. These documents store specific procedural requirements, lists of
supplies, and individual surgeon preferences. These instructions allow for
improved OR flow and efficiency by ensuring all supplies, instruments, and
preparation of the patient are ready for the surgeon.
The healthcare industry has seen a massive disruption in healthcare staffing.
Retirements, staff turnover, and COVID impacts have led to a loss of institutional
knowledge. New hire surgical technicians and nurses were left reliant on outdated
preference cards in many cases due to this turnover.
Relying on outdated preference cards poses several issues:
1. Increased supply costs: Incorrect cards lead to wasted materials and
unnecessary expenses.
2. Surgeon satisfaction: Inaccurate cards increase frustration, negatively impact
communication, and increase operative times.
3. Inaccurate inventory: Outdated cards impact stock levels and drive-up
surgical procedure costs.
4. Training difficulties: Inaccurate cards hinder effective training for new staff
and increase room turnover time.
Updating preference cards can be challenging. Even with a cleanup project
ongoing edits and training of staff is needed. PREFcards is solving these problems
with an intuitive user interface, data analytics, AI suggested edits to improve your
preference cards, and reporting. It’s vital for healthcare organizations to review,
analyze, update, and maintain preference cards to optimize operating room
efficiency and improve margins.
If you are ready to learn more about PREFcards and how we can help, please email
me today at ethannobbs@prefcards.com.