In recent months, headlines on both sides of the Atlantic have told the same story. U.S. hospitals are cutting back surgical schedules because they simply don’t have enough staff, while NHS figures show more than seven million people still waiting for treatment in England. A regrettably high number of procedures are cancelled on the day because the workforce is stretched too thin.
For patients, the consequences are deeply personal – longer waits, worsening conditions, and avoidable threats to their health and wellbeing. For staff, they mean unpredictable days, late finishes, and a workload that feels impossible to sustain.
These delays are also economically ruinous, costing U.S. hospital systems an estimated $32.7 billion each year.
The strain is felt most acutely in the operating room (OR), the most resource-intensive part of a hospital. ORs account for up to 40% of costs, yet inefficiencies undermine their potential daily – operations are delayed or cancelled at the last minute, schedules overrun, and surgical teams spend hours resolving diary clashes or equipment conflicts.
In our survey of OR leaders, the majority said colleagues had left in the past two years directly because of poor work-life balance caused by late finishes and stress on the job.
When the people trained to deliver surgery are pushed to the brink, it is patients who ultimately pay the price. The industry owes a duty of care to both. These are not temporary pressures; they are chronic, systemic challenges that must be confronted now.
Technology can transform OR performance by addressing core issues such as unreliable data, scheduling complexity, and procedural inefficiency. By digitising the OR and providing real-time visibility into surgical workflows, platforms like Proximie enable teams to anticipate issues well before they happen, streamline scheduling, and keep procedures on track.
There is clear potential for artificial intelligence, automation, and computer vision to optimise workflows and increase productivity. Data-driven analysis highlights significant opportunities to minimise downtime between surgeries, improve turnaround times, and capitalise on times when ORs are being used sub-optimally, or not at all.
Efficiency improvements not only deliver cost savings but also create a more sustainable workload for clinical teams, tackling the crux of the global surgical workforce crunch. In the U.S., a shortage of 30,000 surgeons is projected by 2034, while nurse staffing levels remain well below pre-pandemic levels. In the U.K., more than three million patients have already waited longer than the 18-week NHS target for elective surgery. Nearly one in five healthcare workers globally have left their jobs since 2020.
Recruitment alone cannot solve this challenge. The working day must become more bearable for existing staff. Predictability is not just an operational goal; it is a workforce imperative. When teams know they can finish on time, when delays are prevented, and when the day runs exactly to plan, staff wellbeing is protected, attrition is reduced, and patients receive a better quality of care in both the short- and long-term.
The key to improving OR efficiency lies in tackling the root cause of the inefficiency problem: ORs still rely on retrospective or incomplete data, with little real-time visibility into where delays or inefficiencies are occurring. Without accurate, live insights, inefficiencies persist unchecked, forcing staff to work harder to compensate – creating a cycle that quickly leads to burnout and diminished quality of care.
By contrast, digitised OR environments equipped with live, insight-rich data allow clinical teams to understand exactly how each minute is spent, identify bottlenecks instantly, and act on opportunities for optimisation. This shift from reactive to proactive management creates the consistency, safety, and predictability clinicians need to thrive.
These solutions are already demonstrating measurable impact. A major U.S. healthcare provider recently found that around 24% of total OR time – averaging 38 minutes per procedure – could be optimised outside of incision time. Capturing this opportunity equates to a potential $90 million annual upside, generating savings that can be reinvested into more staff, better processes, and equipment – building a brighter, more resilient future for surgery.
Healthcare has reached a fork in the road: either continue operating inefficiently and risk losing the workforce that sustains it, or build smarter systems that support and empower clinicians to deliver effective, efficient care.
About Dr Nadine Hachach-Haram
Proximie founder and CEO Dr Nadine Hachach-Haram is a practising NHS surgeon, lecturer and award-winning clinical entrepreneur. In developing Proximie, Nadine drew on her passions for innovation, education and, most significantly, improving access to safe surgical care worldwide to create a solution that CNN has dubbed the “Future of Surgery”.
Nadine’s vision for a digitally connected global surgical workforce that uses technology to improve access to surgery, scale surgical expertise and boost educational opportunities for the next generation of practitioners has won plaudits around the world. She was awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM) in the late Queen’s Birthday Honours, was selected to join the New York -based Endeavor entrepreneur programme, and sat on the Royal College of Surgeons’ Commission on the Future of Surgery, joining some of the UK’s leading doctors, engineers, data experts, healthcare leaders and patient representatives to set out and explain likely trends in surgery over the next 20 years.
