Control tower to surgical theater

The main social priority is to reduce public debt and to streamline national health service (NHS) costs. Consequently, health managers need to acquire operating methods within their managerial structures so that all available resources are better planned in terms of effectiveness and efficiency, without compromising patient safety. In order to identify the information categories needed to know the whole surgical process is necessary to divide these in two main categories, supply and demand. Demand Information Group (DIG) contains the information that identify patients and its needs in terms of care. Instead Supply Information Group (SIG) contains information about hospital resources in order to cover the supply. The surgical process analyzed in terms such as industrial production process has the goal of produce the “health product for the patient” and its central part is performed in the operating room by a surgical team. This does not mean that the precedent and subsequent phases of the operating room have minor importance, in fact to obtain a high quality “health product” and reduce to a minimum the clinical risks related to the patient it is necessary that each phase of the process is carried out in the right way. The implementation of a Control Tower Approach allows for the management of productive process, able to guide hospital managers to identify the best strategies and to improve the risk management of patient safety in response to the guidelines of the World Health Organization.