Scenario
You are the Service Line Administrator (SLA) for the Operating Room (OR) of a large academic medical center. As part of your performance review, your boss, the Chief Nurse, has asked you to reduce costs of supplies in the Operating Room and get your budget back on track. She makes it clear that your annual bonus is dependent on your budget being balanced by the end of the fiscal year.
As you review the process of pulling supplies for each surgical case, you realize they are throwing away a lot of unused surgical supplies and sending unused trays and equipment back for surgical sterilization. These practices are not only wasteful but expensive. As you dig further into the process, you realize that supplies are pulled based on preference cards that are case-type specific but not surgeon specific, and are quite outdated. You come up with an innovative idea that will not only be surgeon- specific, but utilize the electronic medical record (EMR). The idea is that the surgeon, prior to the surgical case, logs into the EMR. Under the patients’ name, he pulls up the preference card for the type of surgical case and then electronically clicks the check boxes on the supplies he would like on the table and available for the case. The idea is to reduce cost by only using the supplies and sterile equipment needed for the case thus reducing opened but unused trays and supplies. Estimated savings is $1.1 million monthly. You are also a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) student at the College of Nursing and this will be an excellent Capstone Project that has the potential to show a return on investment (ROI) that your advisor has told you is important in the Administrative track.
Goals
You have been told you need to put a committee together to work on electronic preference cards by case type. As part of this initiative, you must convince each of the identified stakeholders that your project is important and will decrease the cost of supplies for the institution as well as the cost of health care for your patients. Your annual bonus depends on the success of this project.
Activity
In this choice-based simulation, you will act as the SLA and conduct a preliminary meeting of the stakeholders in hopes of convincing each of the identified stakeholders that your project is important and will decrease the cost of supplies for the institution as well as the cost of health care for your patients. Your annual bonus depends on the success of this project.
At the end of this simulation, you will assess and reflect on the decisions you made in this week’s discussion board.
Let’s get started!