Streamlining OR Efficiency: Improve Surgical Practices and Cut Waste
OR waste varies by up to 20% between surgeons performing the same procedure. Here's how better preference card management can close that gap — reducing supply costs, labor, and waste across every case.
Hospitals and surgical teams face a dual challenge: improve patient safety and outcomes while reducing costs. These imperatives require a thorough examination of every aspect of patient care to identify potential savings.
The operating room is one of the highest-leverage areas. A survey conducted on 58 neurological procedures found that, on average, 13% of surgical supplies went unused — resulting in an estimated $653 in wasted supplies per case, totaling $2.9 million annually for the studied surgical suite. Effective management of items, from low-cost gloves and sutures to high-cost implantable screws and medication, has the potential to yield a 20% reduction in unused supply costs.
The Variation Problem
OR waste varies significantly between surgeons — research indicates up to a 20% difference in waste between surgeons performing identical procedures at the same facility. Manually understanding and managing this variation is a challenging task.
PREFcards addresses this by analyzing each surgeon’s unique preference card for every procedure and comparing it against similar cards from other surgeons. This surfaces concrete opportunities for supply savings and standardization that would otherwise stay hidden in spreadsheets and manual tracking systems.
The Preference Card Bottleneck
Managing and editing surgeon preference cards has historically been a manual, labor-intensive process — often requiring a full-time effort and still resulting in delayed edits and mistakes. Many facilities struggle to keep preference cards current because the tooling simply wasn’t designed for the pace and complexity of the OR.
PREFcards reduces preference card editing labor time by up to 50%, through intuitive digital card creation, editing tools, and close integration with inventory software partners. OR teams can compare costs across surgeons and update multiple preference cards or inventory items in just a few clicks — work that previously took hours.
The Outcome
Customers using PREFcards experience:
- Labor savings — less time on card maintenance, more time on patient care
- Enhanced card accuracy — cards reflect current surgeon preferences and supply availability
- Reduced waste and inventory spend — fewer unnecessary items opened per case
- Improved surgeon satisfaction — consistent setup that matches what surgeons actually expect
Shorter operative times and lower surgical supply costs follow naturally when preference cards are accurate, up to date, and easy to manage.
Book a demo to see how PREFcards can help your facility close the efficiency gap.
Source
Thiel, C. (2020). An Urgent Call to Reduce and Reuse Hospital Supplies. Managed Healthcare Executive. https://www.managedhealthcareexecutive.com/view/an-urgent-call-to-reduce-and-reuse-hospital-supplies-for-stronger-financial-environmental-and