Turnover time between cases

Specialties Operating Room

Published

I'm curious to know what other facilities consider to be an "appropriate" turnover time between cases. How long between the time you leave your patient in PACU until you roll your next patient into the room?

30 minutues is the standard from room exit to room entrance. But obviously depends on the case. Total shoulder vs hernia room setup etc....

Specializes in OR.

Our goal is 19 minutes or less. It rarely happens :icon_roll

Specializes in ICU and Perioperative.

Our goal is 30 minutes However it rarely happens. Our schedulers seem to be oblivious to the proper flow. For example they will schedule a femur fx with an OSI traction table then to follow they want a vascular case with the radioluscent table which is at the other end of the building. (We have 24 OR rooms running). Or they schedule a abdomen washout on a VRE patient then a total shoulder to follow. The room must be terminally cleaned and the ortho setup gathered. When it would make better sense to schedule the VRE and MRSA cases last or in the same rooms and the ortho procedures to be done in the same room so that we could use the same table for consecutive cases.

That would be too easy!

I have has 30 minutes to completely turn over a heart room from the time the first patient wheeled out of the room to the ICU and the time that the next patient was brought into the room.

And this was at several different facilities. Not much time but we got it done.

Patients with known infections like VRE should be the scheduled as the last case in the room for the day.

But each room should actually be treated as if the patient had an infection previously because many times you do not find out until the cultures have come back and that is two days later, or so.

Specializes in Operating Room Nursing.

In eyes the turnover time can be about 7 minutes. For general surgery about 20-30 minutes. Ortho can take much longer because of all the setting up we do.

The surgeons recently tried complaining about slow turnover times. We proved to them that our times are pretty average, from statistics in an AORN journal.

Specializes in Surgery, Ob/Gyn.
In eyes the turnover time can be about 7 minutes. For general surgery about 20-30 minutes. Ortho can take much longer because of all the setting up we do.

The surgeons recently tried complaining about slow turnover times. We proved to them that our times are pretty average, from statistics in an AORN journal.

The way we do eyes, we can do turnover in 3 minutes when everything runs smoothly. Thats the one thing I love about eyes....turning it into a competition to see how fast we can get said amount of cases done

it really depends on the cases and how much help we get. sometimes housekeeping will pitch in and help and other times not. it is usually about 20-30 mins (quicker with the extra help) on generals and longer on cases with lots of equipment or instruments. our real time goal is 15-20 mins.

Specializes in surgical, emergency.

I think we are all pretty much on the same page here.

In our small 3 OR rural hospital, we are right around 15 minutes, give or take.

We're closer to 30 mins following a total, or a real busy case, if you know what I mean.

Eyes, we are under 5 minutes for the most. Our one doc often is given two rooms, and two teams. He bounces from one room to another.

Over the years, we have done down time study after another. Does not matter, different anes. docs, different nurses/techs, different surgeons, all pretty much the same times.

We've had a few surgeons locum with us, and they say we do very well with our turn overs.

Mike

There are national standards for OR turnover time. The standards say 18 minutes. Take into consideration that this is for all the ORs in your hospital averaged together. As some others have said. Proper planning is important. It is impossible to go from laproscopic to total joint quickly. If you do back to back lap gallbladders and lap appys you should be able to do this in 15 mins or less. Same with ENT Eyes etc. This will offset your 30 minutes for total joint. I have a total joint team that can average 17min turnovers with back to back totals.

GOOD LUCK

PS we range between 17 and 19 mins on any given month.

We have 20 minutes from when one patient leaves the room, til the next one enters.

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