Cutting a 5-month patient wait to 2

The problem

A GI and endoscopy suite with two rooms took about 29 minutes to turn a room over, scope out to scope in. That capped the day at about 10 procedures per room, while more than 560 patients waited up to five months for a colonoscopy. Physicians often worked through lunch to keep up.

The root cause

The team mapped the changeover role by role (physician, techs, two nurses) and ran 5 Whys on the longest delays. The changeover was only part of it. Often the next case couldn't start because the physician was covering clinic or on call, or because the next patient wasn't ready: a late arrival, prep or fasting not followed, no nurse free for a difficult IV, no open bed, or missing orders in a records system not built for GI.

What we did

The team worked on readiness and standardization at the same time. They wrote standard work for room turnover, with a defined tech-and-nurse flow and supplies staged where each step needs them. They added a standard GI order set and recovery protocol to the records system, plus a shorter pre-procedure summary.

For pre-op, they set up an IV placement priority process, standard prep and fasting screening, and a cleaner handoff. And they redesigned the block schedule and staffing to work down the backlog.