This is Scott Becker with the Becker's Healthcare
Podcast.
I am thrilled today to be joined by
a brilliant leader. We're we're joined today by
a leader of the University of Kansas Health
System.
We're joined by Megan Eubanks, and Megan serves
as a senior director of business operations,
preoperative, and procedural services. She's gonna talk to
us about a lot of the improvements, the
things we're doing to improve efficiency, and and
a lot more today. Megan, we are so
thrilled to have you with us. Can you
take a moment to introduce yourself and tell
us about your role,
your focus within perioperative
operations, and also a little bit about the
University of Kansas Health System?
Sure, Scott. Thank you for having me. Like
you mentioned, I serve as the senior director
of business operations for periopt and procedural services
at the University of Kansas Health System. On
the the surgical side of of where I
support, we support both surgical and procedural. But
on the surgical side specifically,
I support seven surgical locations with about 66
operating rooms across the health system, which collectively
perform more than 40,000 surgeries a year and
growing.
My role sits at the intersection of operations,
access, and strategy. I spend most of my
time working with physicians, nursing leaders,
anesthesia, and operational teams to figure out how
we can use our OR capacity as effectively
as possible.
At the end of the day, my goal
is pretty simple. It's to make it easier
for patients to get the care they need
while making sure the system works well for
the teams delivering that care.
Thank you. And you've been at the University
of Kansas now for almost thirteen, fourteen years.
Great leadership career there. Just just remarkable.
At some point, we'll also talk to you
about surety bike riding, if I could motivate
you to do so. But but we'll first
focus on, you know, health care and and
where we're at. But I know you also
do great philanthropic work too.
Talk a little bit about
health care policy and health care constantly is
facing changes,
some sort of policy changes to workforce shortages,
to supply chain disruptions.
Building
operational resilience
is top of mind for many leaders, and
we've seen such resilience over the last few
years post COVID. Really amazing
what the nation's health care systems have done
to sort of get back at it and
and and get
hiring improved and producing
great nurses
and what we've done in terms of resilience.
Talk about how you think about building resilience
in the perioperative space and what made you
turn to artificial intelligence
in a partnership with Linktas in that regard,
in terms of the perioperative space and and
using AI for efficiency?
Yeah. When we talk about resilience in our
areas, it really comes down to access. So,
I think we've had to be more and
more resilient over the last several years,
just due to some of the the issues
that have popped up in health care, COVID
being being one of those, which is when
we started our journey with lean toss. But
it's really making sure that, you know, no
matter what what you face in in the
OR that patients can still get access to
care even when we have constraints on our
resources. So a few years ago when we
started digging into our data, we found something
interesting.
On paper, a 100% of our ORs were
blocked. They were allocated,
to surgical blocks. So it looked like the
system was full.
But when you actually dug into utilization, it
was only about 50 to 55%.
So surgeons
had time,
but patients were still struggling to get access
and, we were struggling to allocate new block
or new time whenever a surgeon started within
our system.
On top of that, we had block releases
that are happening really late.
So about forty eight to seventy two hours
in advance, which means we didn't have a
lot of flexibility
for people to pick up time,
once it was made available.
We have a lot of data in Epic,
but we didn't really have a way to
translate that data into operational decisions.
You know, I think data doesn't always equal
information.
But that's really what led us to partner
with Laintas in in 2021.
Having access to AI and those advanced analytics
really helped us match
our surgical demand,
need for patient access with the available time
that we had to use our resources more
effectively.
Our goal really wasn't just efficiency.
I I think that is a big goal,
but it's really helping to build a system
that is scalable, that could flex and adapt
to conditions when they change.
Thank you. And talk for a second, Megan,
about sort of you you mentioned Epic for
a moment, but talk about Epic first, Epic
only versus using other solutions when they really
make a difference for you in different areas.
What's the difference that you have now
into visibility and what's happening in terms of
the ORs and helping to make better day
to day decisions in the OR, since you
moved to the AI and wing toss approach
versus being defaulting to Epic only. Talk a
bit about the difference that you see. Sure.
Epic, I think, gives a lot of data.
It makes a lot of data available to
us. I think, administratively,
I do believe in building as much into
one single platform as possible.
But the challenge with Epic is it is
an overwhelming amount of of clicks and work
and data that is available, and a lot
of times, teams have to pull multiple reports
together
and really
do extra work to interpret what that means
operationally.
Visibility to to data alone doesn't change behavior.
We're a lean organization
and, believe in signals and and that's truly
what teams need in order to determine
what actions to take.
I I think that
tools like LeanToss help translate really complex data
into
information
that can help provide operational guidance and serve
as those signals. So we send alerts out
to all of our surgeons on how they're
performing.
It the predictive analytics show you your time
in in advance and whether or not it
would typically be booked and invite you to
release that time so another surgeon can pick
it up.
And so it really allows our surgeons and
our operational leaders to quickly see how we're
performing,
identify where those opportunities are to pick up
additional time, and then where we have unused
capacity.
So that allows our teams to take action
quickly in real time rather than spending time
seeking out and digging through reports that they
have to interpret themselves.
Thank you. And I think you mentioned that
you're doing about 40,000
procedures or surgeries a year, which is which
is obviously a massive number.
You've seen over the last few years increased
volume,
stronger prime time utilization,
improved release fill, and and great growth in
open time demand while running fewer ORs.
What organizational matters levers matter the most
in in trying to help you sustain that
growth through staffing and resource constraints and challenge
of staff and resources? We've done a remarkable
job of making greater use, of the operating
rooms,
and using fewer operating rooms, quite frankly, and
increasing number of procedures. That's an amazing throughput
sort of evolution and and and testament to
what you're doing. What levers have made the
biggest difference? What's helped?
Yeah. Thank you.
One of the most important levers that that
I believe in is creating transparency.
One one of the things that we found
that I thought was interesting and I still
find really interesting is that the more that
we were transparent
with our data, the more that individuals started
governing even themselves. And so
having that transparency around block performance and then
what time is available in the OR has
been extremely powerful for us. So
that would be a first lever that I
I would always recommend.
I think our surgeons have the opportunity now
to see clearly how their blocks are performing
and it naturally encourages
behaviors around blocks. So making sure that we're
releasing time earlier,
being able to surface available time earlier so
that time doesn't go unused and so it
just creates a healthier system where release time
can be picked up.
Especially for those surgeons, we're we're growing organizations
so those surgeons that have demand
that may not have as much time as
they need in the OR.
As a result, we've seen
three to 8% year over year surgical volume
growth. We're getting pretty busy, so some of
our areas are close to to capped at
this point,
but we're able to maintain our prime time
utilization around 72 to 74. Across the board,
we have some that are some areas that
are trending well above that. And then our
release fill rate is fifty four percent, which
means the ORs and the clinics, the surgeons
and the and the teams in the clinics
are actively paying attention to the time that
comes available and taking advantage of that.
Our engagement from our surgeons is strong,
and so we've seen about a twenty three
percent year over year growth for demand for
open time.
That that that's remarkable. It's literally remarkable what
you've done. Talk a little bit about for
for leaders trying to build surgical operations
that can withstand shocks, that could be resilient,
where should they start across their journey? And
what's one early move that helps to build
momentum without getting a lot of complexity? That
that's where the goal is to add momentum,
be resilient, withstand challenges,
and get the operating rooms humming, really, to
make sure things are busy and and can
keep, you know, no mission without margin and
and truly the case.
What what can leaders do? You know, at
the end of the day, you have to
build governance into your processes. So you can
implement something that works really well and let
it slip if it if it's not included
in your policy. So for us, we built
a use of all of our tools for
IQ directly into all of our policies. So
our block policy indicates
that we use the data that is available,
the insights that are available through IQ
as part of our policy, which we're reviewing,
pretty consistently with our service line leadership and
what I refer to as opportunity analytics. So
really looking at instead of having a heavy
hand,
really looking at it from a partnership perspective
and identifying where those opportunities are that can
surface for them to be able to make
informed decisions from. And so we also have
built into our scheduling policy. So if you're
requesting additional time in the OR, you're required
to use IQ to do that.
So it's not just a side product, it's
part of our process and it's built into
our policy and it's built into our governance
as well.
And then that way instead of it becoming
a one time initiative, it just becomes the
way that we operate,
as part of our operating model. And that
that structure really keeps all of our decisions
transparent
based on data and that we're all speaking
the same language across the surgeons, the clinics,
clinical leaders in the OR as well as
administrators.
Really remarkable. Can can I ask you one
or two more questions if you're okay with
it? Sure.
Thank you. So you are,
leading this year. You're co chairing this year
the MS ride,
for charity.
Talk a bit about your commitment to charitable
efforts and and why that's so important to
you. Yeah. Of course. Well, I picked up
cycling,
just just by virtue of of wanting to,
stay active and and build a community here
in Kansas City.
Last year was the first year that we
built a team, a very teeny tiny team
around, bike MS,
and ended up joining a larger team that
has been wildly successful called the the Royal
Blue Riders, and they've had many years of
success.
And so this year,
I've been granted the opportunity to co chair
that group
with a a big group of people that
ride, and I think they're the second highest
revenue generator for MS
research in the Kansas City area.
And it really is bred from the fact
that we love to to ride bikes and
and cycle as much as we can.
And then also my partner's sister has been
diagnosed for MS, so it's near and dear
to our heart to raise money,
to support research in that area.
Well, it's it's fantastic
what you do,
both professionally and personally. Just fantastic, Megan. I
I I I love the story of how
you're working with link toss and the efficiency
you're bringing to the ORs and the resilience
and the shock absorption that that helps. It's
it's a raising stat,
higher number of procedures, higher number of surgeries,
using fewer operating rooms, and and getting more
people into the prime time slots. It's really
a remarkable story and effort.
Congratulations,
Megan. It's great to visit you too. We'd
love to get you back on to talk
leadership and some of your advice for leadership.
Just a tremendous,
career in leadership career. Thank you so much
for joining us today on the Becker's Healthcare
podcast. Thank you very much. Thank you, Scott.