Best Practices to Address Surgeon Late Arrival

Reader response #1: We call our surgeons the day before the scheduled surgery date to confirm date and time with his or her office.

If the doctor does not arrive at our ASC within five minutes before start time, we page him or her.

If the doctor is historically late, we build out extra time in his surgical block for the first case, so that he doesn't conflict with another surgeon following him by delaying them.

If staffing and availability are there, we may use one of our OR suites open as a "swing" room, so that we can keep our other rooms running on time for all of our surgeons. (If Dr. Smith is scheduled to be in OR 3 at 7:30, and Dr. Jones is still in there because he was late getting to the center, we will put Dr. Smith in the swing room instead so that he can stay on his schedule)

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Reader response #2: We have a surgeon that is compulsively late. We have had an intervention with him. He is to arrive 30 minutes prior to the OR time but is still always late. We are doing a QI study that tracks the times the surgeon and the anesthesiologist arrive. We then put the tardiness into dollars and cents to show how much money is wasted on staff and the facility cost for waiting around. As we are a one-room center, this can add up and it causes all cases to be delayed. This report goes to the governing board for discussion and recommendations.

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Reader response #3: Our surgeons are expected to arrive 15 minutes prior to in-room time.

Example: 7:45 [arrival] for in-room at 8:00.

If they are late, then they have to buy lunch for surgery suite staff.

Share your thoughts on this challenge, or submit your own question, by e-mailing rob@beckersasc.com.