Becker's Hospital Review

34 EXECUTIVE BRIEFING 1 EXECUTIVE BRIEFING H ospitals and health systems continue to struggle with staffing shortages, outdated technology and manual processes. These issues together have created an incredible burden for hospital staff, which filters down to operating room teams. To learn more about how AI can help address some of these concerns, especially in the OR environment, Becker's Healthcare recently spoke with two experts: • Sonal Matai, President, KARL STORZ United States • Eric Passarge, Senior Marketing Manager, OR Integration, KARL STORZ United States OR teams are buckling under challenging conditions Despite incredible advances in patient care innovation, improvements around hospital workflows are lagging. "In many ways, working conditions have actually gotten worse as the burden of documentation in the EHR has increased," Matai said. "This is especially apparent in the OR." Matai identifies the amount of manual processes staff are dealing with as a major problem. Operative nurses bear a particularly heavy load as they must chart progress by manually entering information into the EMR. The sheer volume of the work may even result in inaccurate or incomplete data. "Think about all the things a nurse has to document in the EHR during a single OR procedure," Matai said. "The phrase 'death by a thousand clicks' comes to mind." In addition to documentation work, OR nurses are responsible for communication with other teams via phone or electronic messaging. For example, they notify clinicians if they are needed in the OR or alert cleaning staff that a case is wrapping up and the OR needs to be turned over. "Operating room nurses spend so much time on documentation tasks, communicating with others and managing technology," Passarge said. "They went to school because they want to care for patients, not scribe information into the electronic medical record. This administrative burden can be a contributor to nurse burnout." The Quadruple Aim and how AI can help nurses The Quadruple Aim in healthcare focuses on increasing provider satisfaction, generating better value through lower costs, improving the patient experience and enhancing population health outcomes. AI-based solutions can help organizations achieve these objectives by automating workflow tasks in an OR setting. "AI automation offers a great deal of promise for improving the overall provider experience," Matai said. "We know clinicians' higher purpose is helping people. With technology, we can reduce manual tasks by improving how note-taking happens and automatically uploading information into EHR systems." Making U.S. healthcare more cost efficient will require a complex set of solutions, but technology will play a critical role. Based on the challenges OR teams face, KARL STORZ has taken the lead in applying technology to OR workflows. Pathway.AI is a new AI-based solution launched in August 2024 that addresses administrative burden in ORs. Using cameras, sensors and AI algorithms, Pathway.AI detects what's happening in ORs; automatically documents information into the EHR system; and communicates with other providers, the environmental services team and more. "When Pathway.AI detects activity in the OR, like wheeling the patient out of the OR, the system can automatically send a text message to the cleaning staff notifying them that the room is ready for cleaning," Passarge said. Many hospitals strive to reduce OR turnover times, but they don't have visibility into which specific aspects of the turnover period need to be addressed. "Pathway.AI can detect patient entry into the room, when cleaning starts and stops, and when the next patient enters," Passarge said. "This provides insights into what's happening during the turnover period and gives hospital staff unprecedented access to data to improve efficiency." Transforming OR efficiency: The AI innovation strategy showing promise in easing staff burden

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