Surgical Scheduling Software

Surgical scheduling software is computer software related to scheduling of tasks for a sequence of surgical cases in one surgery theatre and with one surgery staff using an operational model, a computer and a network. Another vital part of the surgery scheduling process is the communication between the Facility and the Vendor.

Applications may cover platforms that include the traditional (legacy) software-based system of operations or networked server systems. Other approaches are services as with cloud computing includes software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) systems.

The integration of modern communications into the healthcare world has been strongly retarded by the reluctance of the surgeons to organise their work as a service in a production site. However all requirements to be fulfilled for proper performing and high efficiency recommend such approach.

Healthcare IT was focused solely on using and upgrading technology dedicated to research, treatment, and diagnostics.

In the old style schedulers would send paper schedules via fax machine (as often required by hospitals) or call participants using the telephone.

As long as schedulers depended on phones and fax machines to send and receive confirmations, vital time was often spent waiting for information. Unreliable systems and confirmation methods also led to cancelled surgeries and lost revenue.

Administrative tasks, which had long since been automated in other industries, did not utilize technology to the fullest.

A single surgery requires the participation and collaboration of multiple parties: patient, surgeon, support staff (such as anesthesiologist), and device representative. Coordinating and confirming these parties is the responsibility of the surgical administrator's office.

Surgery scheduling, therefore, may be implemented based on software resources that is readily available to schedulers and administrators from production and other service industry in a surgical practice. However the prerequisite is some standard in the applied surgery procedures, that provides time estimates for the operation in the surgery theatre and for the respective preparations before and after the invention in each patient's case.

As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), the Federal government set aside over $20 billion of stimulus money to promote healthcare IT solutions. These funds were for "meaningful use" situations that included electronic health records (EHR) and other means to make healthcare more efficient, competitive, and affordable.

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