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Since 2015, University Medical Center has experienced extraordinary growth, expanding its operating room (OR) capacity by more than 35% through initiatives like our tower expansion, the opening of UVA Health Orthopedic Center Ivy Road, and the purchase of Monticello Community Surgery Center, now branded UVA Health Surgical Care Riverside. Despite this, there is still work to be done — we must continue to create more OR space to meet the growing demands of our surgical staff and patients.

In what will likely be the first phase of a longer-term expansion plan, our Perioperative leadership is underway with a plan that will expand our OR capacity — across all of our sites — by 12% over the next 18 months. Called the University Medical Center Perioperative Roadmap Expansion Plan (PREP), this initiative serves as our strategy to meet our initial 12% expansion goal by increasing staffing, expanding hours, maximizing efficiency, opening new OR space, and providing the associated operational infrastructure to generate the equivalent of six additional ORs. Working together, we will achieve the following:

• Increase staff — including specialty OR teams — to manage the high volume of OR cases and support our growing OR demand.
• Open two more ORs daily at Orthopedic Center Ivy Road.
• Expand more main OR block time to 12 hours, along with allocating more Saturday elective ORs.
• Provide anesthesia coverage for the procedure room at Surgical Care Riverside.
• Renovate IMRIS (intraoperative MRI systems) to create new OR space.
• Provide the necessary operational infrastructure to support the growth (e.g., sterile processing, radiology, PACU, Pre-operative services).

PREP will allow us to grow our capacity, lower surgical wait times, maximize efficiency and quality, while enabling us to accommodate emergency surgical patient needs.

In addition, we are continuing to work on a long-term plan that will add even more OR space to University Medical Center, potentially through new construction. The long-term Periop approach will follow a data-driven strategic planning process, and we commit to convening the right stakeholders when this work begins.

Have questions or comments about PREP? Email PREP@uvahealth.org and we’ll promote all answers on a microsite, which is in development.

Thank you for your partnership as we proceed together on our roadmap expansion!

Liz Hall
Administrator, Perioperative Services

Paola Gehrig, MD
Interim ACMO, Perioperative Services