SYNTHETIC DEMO DEPARTMENT
Sierra Valley Medical Center is fictional. The volumes, hidden-work hours and modelled before/after figures below are computed from demo fixtures, not from a real department. Nothing here should be applied to your service until your own volumes are supplied through the department profile and intake.
Routine outpatient slots per week
Illustrative demo scenario, not a guaranteed outcome.
Outpatient wait
Follows from the modelled slot change under the stated assumptions.
Uncounted technologist hours
Real work that current per-study productivity counts do not capture.
Full-time technologists
Plus limited PRN; every-third-week call rotation
The nine-step walk
Each step answers one question a leadership team actually asks, and links to the working page behind it.
- 1
Diagnose
What is actually happening in this department?Three full-time technologists, clustered weekday coverage, a roughly six-week outpatient wait, 90-minute outpatient slots against rising demand, and urgent inpatient and cEEG work that interrupts outpatient flow.
Open the operational diagnostic - 2
Reveal hidden work
Which work is real but uncounted?Ambulatory hook-ups and disconnects, paediatric and sensory-adaptive cases that consume two to three technologists for one study count, cEEG application and daily maintenance, and unprotected preceptor hours.
- 3
Governance bridge
Who decides what, and who cannot?EEG sits under a broader cardiopulmonary and respiratory administrative umbrella. The administrator is capable but is not an EEG subject-matter expert; the senior technologist holds the modality knowledge without formal authority. The fix is a written technical-authority model, not a reorganisation.
Governance and decision rights - 4
Model scenarios
What coverage shapes are available?Compare 8, 10 and 12-hour models, staggered starts, weekend coverage, PRN and call. In this demo a staggered model protects early inpatient and cEEG work, a mid-day outpatient block, and late urgent and flex coverage.
Open the scenario builder - 5
Workforce and training plan
Where do the people come from?Cohort seats, preceptor load, protected training hours, time-to-independent-practice and board-readiness targets — modelled rather than hoped for.
Preceptors and pipeline - 6
Policy and competency gaps
What is undocumented or expiring?Unwritten escalation and weekend models, two competencies expiring inside 60 days, and one critical competency held by a single technologist.
Competency passport - 7
Financial case
What does the current state cost?Overtime, callback, agency exposure, recruiting and the opportunity cost of unfilled outpatient capacity, each with an editable assumption and a visible formula.
Open the ROI model - 8
30/60/90 transformation
What happens first?Eight sequenced actions with an owner, a decision right and a measure. Administrative, technical and medical decisions stay with the people who hold them.
Open the transformation plan - 9
Monitor
Did it hold?KPI monitoring and scheduled reassessment, comparing access, hidden work, callback burden and competency depth against the baseline.
Recurring monitoring
Step 2 in detail — the hidden work
Work that happens every week, consumes technologist hours, and does not appear in a per-study productivity count.
| Hidden work | Hours / week | Counted in productivity | Why it is missed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ambulatory hook-up and disconnect | 3.8 | No | Disconnects are unscheduled, interrupt outpatient flow and rarely carry their own study count. |
| Multi-tech paediatric / sensory-adaptive cases | 2.8 | No | A second or third technologist is consumed by the same single study count. |
| cEEG setup and daily maintenance | 17.5 | No | Application, electrode maintenance and re-gelling recur daily for the life of the recording. |
| Preceptor and training hours | 4 | No | Teaching time is real technologist time and is currently unprotected. |
| Equipment, electrode and cart maintenance | 3.5 | No | Cleaning, charging, cabling and cart turnaround happen between studies. |
| Total | 31.6 | — | Roughly 79% of one full-time technologist. |
Step 4 in detail — why the staggered model helps here
Coverage shape, not headcount alone, is what unlocks outpatient throughput in this demo department.
Early — 06:30 to 15:00
Inpatient routines, cEEG application and daily electrode maintenance land before the outpatient day starts, so they stop interrupting it.
Middle — 08:30 to 17:00
A protected outpatient block with turnover separated from appointment length: 90 minutes of study plus 15 minutes of turnover, instead of a 90-minute slot absorbing both.
Late — 11:00 to 19:30
Urgent inpatient work, ambulatory disconnects and flex capacity, which also shortens the callback tail into the evening.
Demo assumption, not a guaranteed outcome. The change comes from separating turnover from appointment length, protecting a mid-day outpatient block and moving cEEG application to the early shift.
One page for leadership
What Leadership Needs to Know About This EEG Department — the single sheet to hand an executive who does not work in neurodiagnostics.
- • Three technologists cover routine outpatient, inpatient, ambulatory and continuous EEG work on one weekday-clustered schedule.
- • About 31.6 technologist hours a week are real but uncounted, so productivity per study reads lower than the work performed.
- • The outpatient wait is roughly six weeks while demand rises; slot length and turnover are conflated in the template.
- • Technical authority is unassigned in writing. The modality expertise sits with a senior technologist who holds no formal decision right.
- • Continuous EEG coverage after 18:00 depends on callback, which drives the overtime and callback lines in the financial case.
- • The modelled staggered coverage change is an estimate under stated assumptions, not a promised result.
When the model is not enough
The software handles the repeatable assessment. Where the department is genuinely non-standard, it flags it rather than guessing.
- • Multi-tech adaptive caseload above model assumptions.
- • EEG reporting into a non-neurodiagnostic service line.
- • Continuous EEG coverage resting entirely on callback after hours.
- • A productivity method that understates ambulatory workload.
Administrative draft — not clinical authority
This output is operations and administration software. It does not interpret EEG, does not provide diagnostic decision support, and carries no clinical authority. Clinical criteria and local policy require review and approval by your physician and medical leadership.