Custom Procedure Tray Provider Checklist for Efficiency and Waste Reduction

Perioperative teams are facing tremendous pressure to perform procedures in a more efficient and cost-effective manner as healthcare organizations continue to struggle financially.

A Custom Procedure Tray (CPT) partner can play a central role in helping a perioperative team boost procedural efficiency and contain supply costs, but not all CPT providers are alike.

Set your operating room (OR) up for success by using this checklist to evaluate CPT providers. Select one that checks all the boxes on their commitment to your organization’s clinical and financial goals.

✓ Alleviates your perioperative team of supply management burden
Labor remains a major pain point for U.S. healthcare organizations. Nearly three out of five (59%) perioperative leaders cited staffing shortages as a substantial issue for their ORs. A significant burden on OR teams is supply management, with 62% of perioperative leaders rating supply related factors as “very” or “extremely” problematic.

A CPT partner should design its program around your clinicians. It should meet with them to understand their goals, solicit their input on tray components, and adjust tray content based on their changing needs. With this upfront work completed, the CPT provider does the heavy lifting of picking and packing trays, seamlessly delivering to your OR the supplies your clinicians need to care for patients.

✓Helps drive procedural efficiency, and in turn, revenue generation
Over 61% of all surgical procedures experience delays. With an average cost per OR minute of $62, inefficiencies can eat away at profits rapidly¹. Research has shown how missing, inaccurate, and unnecessary supplies in procedural trays can decrease efficiency, and in some cases, result in case postponements or cancellations^2,3.

Your CPT partner should be committed to ensuring your OR team has the right supplies (nothing missing/no unnecessary items) in the right place at the right time, so cases can start on-time and proceed as planned. Furthermore, there should be no surprise substitutes that cause confusion or necessitate a staff member leaving the OR to find a different item. Your perioperative team should feel confident that when they open a tray it will contain the components they are expecting.

✓Supports high-quality patient outcomes
The link between high-quality supplies used in procedures and high-quality patient care has been well documented. What is not as apparent is how OR efficiency impacts care.

A survey of perioperative leaders provides evidence of this link. Among leaders who rated their OR efficiency as “high” or “very high,” 95% also rated their clinical outcomes as “high” or “very high,” indicating that OR efficiency is associated with better clinical outcomes.

Ensure your CPT partner supports high-quality patient outcomes in both ways. During the manufacturing and assembly processes, CPT team members should perform quality checks to identify defects and ensure only functional components are placed in your trays. Your dedicated CPT team should also regularly review tray components and usage to suggest opportunities for component standardization by procedure. This can help drive further OR efficiency by standardizing workflows as your perioperative team is handling the same items in the same configuration across multiple cases.

✓Supports positive financial outcomes
Ask your CPT provider how they will work with you to optimize the content of your trays to support better financial outcomes for your organization. As a recent study published in the American Journey of Surgery found, “Simple and feasible adjustments to standard single-use surgical packs can have a significant impact on waste reduction and cost-savings.”⁴

Select a CPT partner with an expert clinical OR assessment team that performs SKU optimization to standardize components in trays and across doctors and conducts waste elimination reviews to ensure your organization is only paying for what it needs.

Conclusion

The OR is the revenue driving engine for most healthcare organizations and in today’s economic climate, effective and efficient perioperative services are more critical than ever to financial viability.

Putting in the time and effort up front to evaluate CPT providers will set up your organization for long-term success. Select a partner that is dedicated to supporting your perioperative team in meeting all its goals – clinical, operational and financial.