Slot length versus the time it takes to turn a room

Room turn is the quiet constraint in most Cobb County procedure suites. A template that places six minor procedures in a two-hour block assumes the room is ready the moment the previous patient leaves. In practice, a chaperone is still with the last patient, the couch paper is being changed, and the next tray is not yet signed out.

Capacity planning that ignores turn time will always recommend more slots. The waiting room then backs up even though the ‘utilisation’ figure looks healthy. A more honest chart subtracts a fixed turn from each procedure slot and shows how many patients the room can actually release in a session.

We measure turn by standing in the doorway for one ordinary list, stopwatch optional. The number is rarely glamorous: four to seven minutes in a consulting room, longer where instruments are involved. Putting that number on the template is often the entire intervention.

Where a clinic keeps local counts of turns and list lengths, those counts are ordinary operational notes. They are not investment records and they do not move money.