Operation Theatre Scheduling

About the Feature

Scheduling of surgeries in any care setting is a challenging task. There are multiple variables that go into consideration - Surgeon’s availability, the patient’s condition, availability of the OT and the right medical devices/ surgical instruments etc among other things. And if done rightly, it contributes to improving the operational efficiency of the hospital and also ensures timely care to patients with minimal waiting time. Hence it is important that the staff are supported with the right tool to make efficient schedules.

There are different types of Scheduling in the context of Operation Theaters that are followed in different hospitals:

• Open scheduling : Open scheduling allows surgical cases to be assigned to an operating room available at the convenience of the surgeons.
• Block scheduling : Block scheduling, allows assignment of specific surgeons or groups of surgeons to a set of time blocks, normally for some weeks or months, into which they can arrange their surgical cases. In the pure form, the surgeon or group "owns" their time blocks. None of those time blocks can be released.
• Modified block scheduling: Modified block scheduling is modified into two ways to increase its flexibility. Either some time is blocked based on the surgeries to be performed and some is left open, or unused block time is released at an agreed-upon time before surgery and allotted to another Surgeon.

In Bahmni, we use Modified Block Scheduling type, as it is widely used.

This type of Scheduling module helps maximize your operational efficiencies and profits by providing a flexible tool to manage block scheduling. You can reserve blocks of resource time for particular providers, provider groups, procedures, service types and patient types.

 Bahmni OT Module Scheduling (Screenshot)

Bahmni OT Module Scheduling (List View)

Features in OT Scheduling:

• Resource reservation for specific surgical appointments, based upon multiple parameters.
• Timed release of under-utilised blocks.
• Manual release and/or removal of blocks by authorized users.
• Block conflict warnings.
• Flexible definitions of blocks and free scheduling of appointments within the block.
• Utilisation metrics, based upon historical data, Estimated & Actual time recording.
• View/Print Weekly OT Schedules.
• Ease of OT Schedule creation pulling procedure information from observations.
• Guide OT admins to create schedules for “Surgery Ready” patients.
• Authorized users can create, edit, release or remove various types of blocks.
• Hovering the mouse on a surgical block will show block details as a tooltip.

Future Enhancements:

• Actual Time updates to the OT Schedules on calendars
• Automatic movement of Surgical appointments or blocks across operation theatres.