Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Post-Anesthesia/Peri-Operative Care Unit

Healthcare:
Acute Care

The goal of this project was to create a flexible, efficient peri-operative unit that would facilitate better throughput for Operating Rooms.

Our team held interactive sessions to map the patient, staff, anesthesia, visitor, and equipment flows and understand where they needed to intersect and where they needed to be unobstructed. This resulted in a flow and adjacency diagram that became the roadmap for planning the unit. Our team analyzed patient volumes and developed a computer simulation to study how many beds would be required to accommodate existing volumes plus projected growth. Through this simulation, using the flexible rooms, it was determined that 22 rooms would satisfy their existing and future volumes and fit within the available space.

The unit remained operational throughout the construction bringing new flexible rooms on with each phase. Distributed nurse stations allowed visibility and access to medications, nutrition, and equipment throughout the unit. Early clinical staff feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Efficiency has been improved and there are no longer waits for beds, allowing the ORs to run more efficiently.