Improving Operating Room Turnover Time in a New York City Academic Hospital via Lean

Cerfolio and colleagues applied lean and value stream mapping to operating room teams at their academic health center, creating a pilot approach to achieve more efficient operating room turnover. Importantly, a multidisciplinary group of stakeholders who contribute to operating room turnover—from surgeons and anesthesiologists, to nurses, elevator operators, housekeeping staff, infectious disease specialists, and hospital administrators—contributed to reviewing and streamlining the process. By eliminating nonvalued steps and performing other steps synchronously rather than sequentially, among other changes, median operating room turnover time was reduced from 37 minutes (range, 26 – 167 minutes) to 14 minutes (range, 10 – 45 minutes).