Evaluating and Improving the Perioperative Process: Benchmarking and Redesign of Preoperative Patient Evaluations

This study examines industrial and operations management practices of continuous process improvement, process benchmarking, and process reengineering to evaluate and improve the perioperative process within a hospital environment. This paper identifies how dynamic technological activities of analysis, evaluation, and synthesis applied to internal and external organizational data can highlight complex relationships within integrated processes to yield improved capabilities. The identification of existing process limitations, potential process capabilities, and subsequent contextual understanding are contributing factors that yield a redesign of preoperative patient evaluations within a hospital's perioperative process. Based on an 84-month longitudinal study of a large teaching hospital, this case study investigates the impact of integrated information systems to identify, qualify, and quantify process redesign practices that improve perioperative efficiency and effectiveness. Theoretical and practical implications and/or limitations are also discussed for practitioners and researchers alike.