AT A GLANCE
- Industry: Healthcare
- Location: Maastricht, Netherlands
- Number of employees: 7,500
- Key transformation: Pre-Anesthesia Screening
HEADLINES
- Enhance patient safety and experience.
- Improve OR efficiency and throughput.
- Increase POS capacity without additional staff.
CHALLENGE.
The Pre‑Anesthesia Screening Clinic (POS) at MUMC+ screens approximately 15,000–20,000 patients annually, serving as a crucial safety checkpoint before surgical and non-surgical procedures. During the initial Epic go-live, the POS workflow was modeled on a design originating from another Dutch hospital. While it provided a strong starting point, it created opportunities to better align the workflow with MUMC+‑specific clinical practices, expectations, and operational realities.
These improvement opportunities included:
- Ensuring more uniform and complete screenings, with clear and consistently structured data.
- Reducing the administrative burden on clinicians and operational staff.
- Minimizing the risk of planning delays and same‑day adjustments that can impact OR flow.
- Strengthening patient experience by preventing repeated questions and improving clarity in communication.
Because key anesthesia‑relevant information was not always captured or surfaced in a predictable way, there was a clear opportunity to increase reliability and strengthen the POS as the first safety checkpoint in the procedural process.
SOLUTION.
Working closely with anesthesia leadership and operational teams, Nordic and MUMC+ redesigned the POS workflow to fully match the organisation’s clinical expectations, legal requirements, and day‑to‑day practical needs. The new design promotes clarity, consistency, efficiency, and strong clinical decision‑making.
Together, we created an innovative, future-proof solution, which included:
- A complete structural overhaul of the Anesthesia Pre-evaluation Note, replacing non‑essential items with clinically meaningful fields.
- A fully redesigned patient‑entered questionnaire, with responses filing directly into the pre‑evaluation note and reducing dozens of clicks per screening.
- A clearly organized and predictable workflow, helping every provider follow the same logical structure.
- Direct integration with required preoperative orders, including Procedure Pass and expanded Our Practice Advisories (OPAs) to support decision-making.
- Strong alignment with anesthesia leadership and organizational stakeholders to deliver a high‑quality technical build and drive strong adoption.
IMPACT.
- Smoother, more predictable procedural logistics, reducing stress and uncertainty during an already impactful medical experience.
- Fewer repeated questions and more personalized attention, reinforcing trust and a sense of coherence throughout the care pathway.
- Enhanced patient safety with all relevant anesthesia information consistently captured and clearly visible to providers.
For Clinicians
- Greater confidence and satisfaction in uniform, complete screenings that support clinical workflows from POS to procedure, reducing variability, ambiguity, and surprises.
- Minimized administrative burden on clinicians, significantly reducing manual documentation and eliminating unnecessary double work.
For the Organization
- Improved OR efficiency and throughput due to fewer same-day cancellations and last-minute adjustments.
- Increased POS capacity without additional staffing, as time saved during appointments converts directly into higher productivity.
- Alignment with regulatory guidelines and standards.
Ultimately, this project reinforces preoperative screening as a reliable, efficient, and high‑quality process, supporting MUMC+ in its role as a leading academic medical center and contributing to safer, more consistent care for every patient.
This project has made preoperative screening at MUMC+ more straightforward and consistent. By cutting down variability and administrative work, we can focus our time where it matters most, while maintaining the highest clinical and regulatory standards.”
BHanneke Heynen and Yvette Kuijpers
Joint Clinical Leads POS-clinic, Maastricht UMC+
