Digital health: A day in the life of an operating room nurse

In this audio presentation, Bain partner Tim van Biesen discusses how digital health technologies will affect the life of an operating room nurse.

Digital health won’t just transform the back office. It will change the daily lives of people throughout the healthcare system—from doctors, nurses and clinical investigators to patients, including both the seriously ill and the very healthy.  

Presentation transcript: A day in the life of an operating room nurse

Slide 1. Digital health: OR nurse

Hi. I’m Tim van Biesen. I’m a partner in Bain & Company’s Healthcare practice based in New York. When we think about the impacts of digital health on healthcare, we often think about it in terms of how it affects patients and how it affects physicians. But we often overlook those people who drive efficiency most often: nurses, care providers, families. In this example, we want to bring to life for you what digital health can do for the surgical OR nurse.

Slide 2. A day in the life of the surgical nurse

Nurse Pam has a very broad and complex set of activities that she has to get through during the day. She’s responsible for several surgical procedures, She’s responsible for making sure that the right items are in the right place. And she’s responsible for making sure that the inventories are properly allocated.

Slide 3. Managing surgical cards

Imagine a situation in which our Nurse Pam is responsible for two very different surgical procedures. Online she can review those surgical cards—one for a whole knee replacement, another for a cardiac stent procedure, which will save her a substantial amount of time, not having to do this with paperwork. She can check the devices for approval and sees that one of those—the stent—requires extra clearance from the VP of Supply Chain. And in the event that a switch is made with surgical approval, she can save both time and a substantial amount of money for the hospital. She can check the inventory against the OR stock, and she can move the inventory around the hospital.

Slide 4. VP of Supply Chain reviews stent request

While the OR nurse heads off to prepare the patient for surgery, the VP of Supply Chain receives the stent request. He or she can check it out against the hospital’s contract structure, review it with the surgeon in question to make sure it’s appropriate for use in the procedure and then make an approval. This approval heads straight for the nurse’s tablet and releases the inventory in the RFID cabinet so that the device can be removed without any red flags.

Slide 5. Checks in on patient records

In the meantime, the OR nurse is preparing the patient for surgery. A protocol-based agent was used some two days prior to prepare the patient for pre-op procedures. In one case, those procedures weren’t followed, and she needs to reschedule that patient for surgery, saving a great deal of time on having to move that patient into prep. She can also release the inventory for that procedure, she can schedule another surgery into that slot, and she can prepare the team and the OR staff for the surgery that will take place that day.

Slide 6. Preps OR for surgery

To prepare for the surgical procedure, the OR nurse can use a surgical reality app to set up the instruments and supplies exactly the way the surgeon wants them. She can do this based on the protocols that can be customized for each team and work with a device rep who can assist remotely and answer questions about the equipment using a telepresence system rather than having to have them in the OR with the surgeon.

Slide 7. Assists with surgery

During the actual surgery, the automatic captures for the EMR saving time and tabulating and capturing the data. The equipment is checked against an automated checklist, and the remote rep can mentor the surgeon on the placement of the stent and support multiple procedures in a shorter period of time.

Slide 8. Enters post-op orders

After the surgery, the protocol-based agent reviews the surgical data and delivers post-op order suggestions, which can be entered automatically and distributed to other stakeholders in the patient’s care continuum. Those orders can include patient self-care and prescriptions they can view in their own room. This can help drive compliance and save time for the entire support staff.

Slide 9. Alerted about non-compliant patient

Even after the patient leaves the hospital, the remote patient monitoring devices can inform her care providers if they aren’t following orders. For example, in this case, with a whole knee replacement, if the patient isn’t receiving the physical therapy and an angle displacement sensor on their leg isn’t being moved with the appropriate frequency, that flag can go back to her care-provider team who can communicate with that patient to determine that they comply with their recovery program.

Slide 10. Chats with patient who needs Rx

The patients can reach out proactively as well—in this case, scheduling a video-chat with her care provider. In this case, her medication is required for pain management, and the nurse can work with the physician to get that prescription by using an e-prescribing system to make that prescription available for the patient without ever having had an in-person visit.

Slide 11. By 2020, digital health will have cut costs and increased innovation

While this situation is entirely illustrative, digital health can impact all parts of the care continuum—driving efficiency, improved quality and patient outcomes, availability of information, and greater consumer engagement. And it won’t be just patients and physicians driving this change. Every participant in the care continuum can play a very meaningful role.

Slide 14. Contact us

Thank you for your time. If you’d like to contact me or any of my Bain partners on the topic of digital health, please don’t hesitate to contact us.