The anesthesia preop is one of the most critical steps in ensuring that a patient’s surgery/procedure proceeds smoothly, safely and efficiently. However, with increasing demands on anesthesia providers to cover more rooms, manage a patient’s entire PACU stay, and provide complete perioperative analgesia including nerve blocks, time for preop assessments is at a premium. This is further compounded by the fact that most ambulatory surgery patients are not seen until the day of surgery.

Although some facilities have tried to solve this problem by mailing patients handwritten questionnaires before surgery or having them fill out a preop form on the day of surgery, these forms are often incomplete, forgotten at home, or illegible. The lack of uniformity means that the information provided needs to rigorously reviewed. In addition, there is then the added step of copying the information provided into the multiple systems or handwritten documents required for the medical record.