Surgical Scheduling & Inventory

The Business Problem

Athenahealth was looking to enter into the hospital market. Although they had solutions for ancillary facilities, the needs in the hospital space differed - including supporting administrative and clinical workflows. In order to sell successfully, we needed to build a solution for surgical scheduling and inventory.

My Role

I worked with a lead designer and user researcher on this project. I designed the surgical scheduling tool and traveled around the country to conduct contextual inquiries at hospitals.

Research
Throughout the project our team visited 7 hospitals across America to observe their surgical scheduling and inventory processes. I was lucky enough to visit 5 of them myself. We observed and spoke with a wide array of the surgical workforce from schedulers and pre-op nurses to surgical IT staff and inventory managers. I was even able to observe a surgery taking place to watch how inventory was recorded (bucket list item - check!) The visits took place over many months and each time we visited we had new questions on which to probe.

Research Synthesis

After conducting some of our research, I created this swim lane diagram to document the process of a patient's surgery. It proved very useful for getting the whole team on the same page.

Surgical Schedulers Need to…

See time blocked off for particular surgeons in order to schedule in the correct operating room.

Enter extra details about a procedure like side of body, anesthesia type, patient position, and equipment in order to ensure all of the supplies, equipment, and room setup will be correct.

See particular surgical details like side of body, patient age, and latex allergy alerts in order to maximize the operating room's efficiency and keep patients safe.

Inventory Managers Need to…

Know which procedures are happening on which days, by which surgeon in order pick all of the equipment correctly.

Know the preferred surgical supplies for each surgeon and procedure so that they can ensure each surgeon has everything they need.

Surgical Techs Need to…

See particular surgical details like side of body, patient age, and latex allergy alerts in order to ensure the operating room is arranged correctly.

Understand the surgeon’s preferences for the operating room so that they can prepare the lighting, layout, and even music successfully.

Design Iteration 1

Design Iteration 2

An axure prototype of the rescheduling flow. We used this flow for both user testing and communicating with the development team.

Final Design

This is the main screen where all users can view the upcoming surgical cases, schedule, reschedule, and add additional details. This was the final MVP for surgical scheduling.

In order to add procedures and details to a patient's case, a user would use this page to enter the necessary information to book the surgery

Here a user can edit a preference card. Preference cards show a surgeon's preference for supplies, arrangements of rooms, and even what kind of music they want to play while they operate.

Business Impact

Completed last piece in a critical solution for athenahealth’s end-to-end hospital solution which allowed us to sell to the 6,146 in-patient hospitals and the 9,280 outpatient surgical centers in the US.