Hospitals are facing a real double crunch as they plan for 2026: the risk of lower payments from government programs alongside rising labor costs. Everyone has turned to the operating room for help, as the OR is the number one revenue source for every health system in the country.
As a result, smart hospitals are working harder than ever to make the most of every OR minute. Yet perioperative teams still face the same daily frustrations as they forecast the surgical day: inaccurate schedules, underused block time, and preventable delays caused by mismatches between the plan and reality.
Today, we’re announcing the launch of Apella Horizon — our capacity optimization solution, making Apella the first OR management platform to bring scheduling, real-time day-of coordination, and performance analytics together in a single, connected system, all powered by the same trusted data foundation.
Typically, most scheduling and block allocation decisions rely on incomplete data that’s manually entered into the EHR — a system built for documentation and billing, not explicitly for the operational realities of surgery. That means the information in the EHR often leaves out the perioperative details that matter most.
Case durations are based on simplistic averages from a small slice of historical cases, or they are estimates that haven’t been updated in months. Turnover times are often missing altogether. There’s no way to capture nuances, like how two complex cases in a row means the turnover in between may take longer, or how time-of-day patterns can affect case length. The same issue exists for block utilization — most leaders rely on delayed, hard-to-trust reports that make timely action nearly impossible.
When these realities aren’t reflected in your schedule, you’re starting the day at a disadvantage before the first case even begins. Under-scheduled cases eat into overtime. Over-scheduled cases result in unplanned idle time. Unreleased blocks leave valuable minutes unused. Open time slips by unnoticed until it’s too late to fill.
Join us for a webinar featuring Houston Methodist, Unlocking OR Capacity: A Framework for Smarter Scheduling, where we'll discuss the essential role of ground-truth data in optimizing OR utilization.
Tools to improve block scheduling aren’t new. EHRs have added calendaring features. Point solutions promise advanced algorithms. But if they’re all working from the same inaccurate, incomplete, or delayed data, the outcome won’t change. Even the best algorithm can’t overcome flawed inputs. Without a complete, real-time, trusted data foundation, OR capacity optimization will always fall short.
Introducing Apella Horizon
At Apella, we’ve always believed the same ground-truth intelligence powering your real-time coordination should also guide how you build tomorrow’s schedule. Apella Horizon delivers that vision. Built on our ambient AI technology and integrated with EHR data, Apella Horizon is designed to help hospitals optimize capacity, improve utilization, and simplify workflows.
Our computer vision captures a precise, minute-by-minute record of intraoperative events, producing a complete, objective dataset. It removes error-prone documentation work and builds trust among surgeons and OR teams, enabling faster, more informed decisions across the perioperative journey.
With Apella Horizon, hospitals can:
- Improve case forecasts. Predict both case and turnover durations with greater accuracy by incorporating surgeon patterns, case complexity, time of day, and sequencing.
- Fix misscheduled cases early. Flag and fix the cases most likely to cause unplanned idle time or delays, before the day even begins.
- Optimize block time. See block usage in real time, spot underutilized time, and make reallocation decisions with surgeon-specific data everyone trusts.
- Fill open time efficiently. Identify available slots and automatically promote them to the right surgeons so ORs run at full capacity.
Hospitals using Apella Horizon are already seeing measurable capacity and utilization improvements:
- 69 fewer delayed minutes per OR on days with misscheduled cases
- 46 percentage-point reduction in late OR days
- Reduction from 60% to 16% in share of underscheduled cases
- Two filled cases per OR per month through automated promotion of open time
Just as importantly, surgeons and perioperative leaders are finally working from the same source of truth, which helps replace debates over data with faster, more collaborative decision-making.
The complete picture
Scheduling, day-of coordination, and process improvement aren't separate problems. They're parts of the same system that are deeply interconnected and should run on the same trusted data. With Apella, hospitals can close the loop: plan tomorrow’s schedule with accuracy, keep today’s cases on track, and learn from last month’s performance — all in one platform, powered by the same ground-truth data. Enabling OR leaders to make decisions based on deep OR intelligence is how we go from just improving scheduling to truly optimizing the OR.