A hospital transforms surgery scheduling

How it started

Every unused minute in an ambulatory surgery facility costs a hospital $7.25 — or $435 an hour. That means every wasted minute from canceled appointments and other changes to the operating room surgery schedule drives up healthcare costs and affects patient services. In fact, if you do the math, in one year, the unused minutes add up to $3,800,160.

One leading medical center*, a top-ranked hospital, had to find a way to better utilize operating rooms, especially when surgery schedules changed by the minute. To do this, they needed to communicate in real time with 24,000 team members across 100 locations, many of them desk-less workers.

Where they landed

The leading medical center utilized their Firstup intelligent communication platform to create hyper-personalized communication to easily reach employees with real-time scheduling information. Their efforts reduced surgery wait times for thousands of patients, leading to improved health outcomes for the community.

The reduction of unused operating rooms also saved the medical center an estimated $200,000 in the two years since the campaign began—all because the communications team used Firstup to better reach employees and personalize campaigns with real-time critical information.

*The name of the leading medical center has been removed for privacy reasons.