Measuring success and maximising productivity: How Proximie is unlocking Operating Room efficiencies at scale

Proximie is the only platform that combines telepresence, content management and data insights - an extremely powerful trifecta that simultaneously and interoperably delivers vast improvements in efficiency savings, patient safety and workforce training.

In the complex ecosystem of a hospital, Operating Rooms (ORs) stand out as both vital centres of care and substantial cost centres. Surgical interventions are pivotal in healthcare, yet ORs are among the most expensive and resource-intensive areas of a hospital (1). This status quo is not sustainable, and the negative impact of this cost-ineffectiveness on patient safety is cause for considerable alarm.

There is tremendous scope for improvement, however, and Proximie has the power to identify and effect potential improvements through innovative technology and data-driven solutions. Proximie’s world-leading, transformative approach is built on collecting objective, reliable and transparent OR data, and using it to provide scalable and flexible solutions that can integrate AI applications for automation.

The following article explores how Proximie’s groundbreaking technology can measure success and maximise profitability in any OR, and the role data will play in transforming the future of surgical efficiency and patient safety.

Unlock operational efficiency and productivity

Reducing costs and increasing revenue needn’t be a vague aspiration; Proximie renders these efficiencies an achievable aim by collecting, sorting, reviewing and analysing a number of efficiency data points.

One hospital Chief Operating Officer we spoke to as part of a series of hour-long interviews with senior healthcare stakeholders described the minute-by-minute importance of data to creating efficiency: “We measure OR cost in terms of staff cost as a proxy. Therefore, every minute that it's not utilised is quite costly. Turnaround time also is key. How quickly do patients get in and out of anaesthetic rooms? What is the turnaround time of the operating room?”

Metrics such as touchtime, turnover, inactive turnover and procedure length become not just numbers but pivotal indicators that inform strategic decisions. These data-driven insights benchmark workflow to facilitate the redesigning and updating of existing processes within the OR. Additionally, this supports the surgical network by helping to standardise practice, while also employing automations to reduce the amount of resources dedicated to administrative tasks.

In essence, Proximie makes it possible to translate objective, real-world data into major improvements in efficiency, ensuring surgical cases are carried out by better-optimised healthcare teams, and finding new ways to automate otherwise manual processes. This streamlining of resources and costs inevitably results in better outcomes for patients.

"In essence, Proximie makes it possible to translate objective, real-world data into major improvements in efficiency."

Maximise patient safety

Every harmful adverse event that occurs in the OR has an associated knock-on cost - whether a result of patient deaths, disability or additional treatments that occur as a consequence of the event - and this causes a tremendous drain on hospitals’ financial resources.

The solutions provided by Proximie’s data and its subsequent analysis assume a modest 25% reduction in the number of adverse events via the use of technology to facilitate observation and review, resulting in huge efficiency savings in the OR - and the greater the number of ORs in which Proximie is used, the greater the impact on patient safety and cost efficiency in hospitals.

By reducing adverse events, negligence claims, and improving patient outcomes, patients are reassured heading into surgery and cancellations are avoided. As outlined in Proximie’s white paper Patient safety in surgery: The urgent need for reform, technology, data and collaboration across the healthcare industry is the key to the reduction in never events, safety incidents and their associated costs. This, in turn, creates a less stressful and more productive environment for hospital workforces, leading to an overall improvement in performance and patient care.

Enhance workforce training

No competitor can match Proximie’s ability to record four different feeds simultaneously, providing a high definition, low-latency, 360-degree view of every angle of the OR, making possible a comprehensive understanding of every surgical procedure. Proximie now has over 80,000 individual surgical views archived on its platform, which is immensely valuable for both personal review of surgical technique as well as oversight of collaboration within the OR team.

The impact of these video recordings extends beyond operational and financial spheres; Proximie fundamentally transforms workforce training. Proximie makes it possible for surgical residents to prepare extensively using video feeds or live sessions - accelerating their learning curve and assessment speed - while consultants gain enhanced access to Continuous Professional Development (CPD), particularly when it comes to keeping abreast of the latest techniques used in novel procedures.

The end result is a surgical culture of ‘prepare, perform, perfect’ - where video recordings provide additional training hours that form the basis for continual development and honing of technique - that leads to a more adept and proficient surgical workforce.

“The end result is a surgical culture of ‘prepare, perform, perfect’ - where video recordings provide additional training hours that form the basis for continual development and honing of technique - that leads to a more adept and proficient surgical workforce.”

Gain the competitive edge

Proximie delivers beyond the level of competitors based not only on its 360-degree view of the OR and immersive, interactive user experience described above, but because it is cloud-based, vendor neutral and compatible with all devices in the OR. This means Proximie integrates easily and seamlessly into any OR, providing unmatched connectivity while capturing OR data pre, intra and post procedure.

As such, Proximie is the only platform that combines telepresence, content management and data insights - an extremely powerful trifecta that simultaneously and interoperably delivers vast improvements in efficiency savings, patient safety and workforce training. And, crucially, the success and ROI of deploying Proximie are quantifiable within a year of installation - a fact backed up by health economics, academic research and data from hospital surveys. Find out how much you could be saving in your OR with our Efficiency Savings Calculator.

"...the success and ROI of deploying Proximie are quantifiable within a year of installation."

Proximie heralds a tech-led and data-driven transformation of the OR, one in which every efficiency implemented and saving made marks progress towards a future in which surgeons are empowered to do their very best work, and patients are assured that their medical teams are fine-tuned to ensuring their safety and optimal treatment outcomes.

“Proximie is the only platform that combines telepresence, content management and data insights - an extremely powerful trifecta that simultaneously and interoperably delivers vast improvements in efficiency savings, patient safety and workforce training.”

‍

References:
(1) Overdyk FJ, Harvey SC, Fishman RL, Shippey F. Successful strategies for improving operating room efficiency at academic institutions. Anesth Analg. 1998 Apr;86(4):896–906. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1213/00000539-199804000-00039.