Daily anesthesia assignment schedule automation: Utilizing an electronic scheduling system to export daily assignments into the electronic health record

• Published in: Perioperative care and operating room management Vol. 21; p. 100135
• Main Authors: Hoefnagel, Amie L, McLeod, Charles, Mongan, Paul D
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 01-12-2020
• Subjects: Daily anesthesia staff assignments; Electronic health record; Electronic medical record; EPIC Systems Corporation; Operating room scheduling software; QGenda scheduling system; Schedule automation; Schedule automation; EPIC Systems Corporation; Daily anesthesia staff assignments; Operating room scheduling software; Electronic health record; Electronic medical record; QGenda scheduling system
• ISSN: 2405-6030; 2405-6030
• DOI: 10.1016/j.pcorm.2020.100135

Most anesthesia providers utilize an electronic health record (EHR) during daily interactions with patients. For many anesthesia groups the daily operating room assignments are also made within the EHR. The individual manual entry of providers into the assignment fields within the EHR are time consuming and may be a source for human error and incorrect assignment of personnel.
Here we present a process that allowed our group to automate import of the daily staff assignments from a central scheduling software system into our EHR. We have described the process from both an information technology build standpoint as well as evaluating the improvement of accuracy of scheduling assignments after implementation.
We evaluated the rate of scheduling optimization, i.e. changes made to clinical assignments subsequent to finalization of schedule at 2pm the workday before the day of surgery, in a cohort of 998 daily OR schedule locations (494 pre- and 504 postimplementation) and found a 13.3% rate of optimization pre implementation versus a 6.9% rate of optimization after implementation.
This process of automation saves time, improves ease of making daily assignments, and may have broader applications for improvement in transparency and satisfaction of providers in their assignments.