Conference Agenda

Periop Leader Week 2026 (Formerly OR Manager Conference & OR Business Management Summit) brings together perioperative leaders from hospitals, health systems, and ambulatory surgery centers for a focused week of practical learning and collaboration.

The agenda will explore today’s most urgent priorities—staffing and retention, operational efficiency, financial performance, regulatory readiness, patient safety, and cross-department alignment—through real-world case studies, actionable tools, and peer-driven discussions. Every session is designed to equip leaders with strategies they can implement immediately within their unique care settings.

We are actively building this year’s agenda and invite you to help shape the conversation—presentation proposals are being accepted through March 9. Click here to submit a proposal.

Discover the topics you can expect to hear about:

Leadership & Workforce track

  • Preventing burnout and strengthening resilience through practical self-care and shared governance strategies
  • Optimizing perioperative staffing models for stability, flexibility, and performance
  • Building, retaining, and developing high-performing, diverse perioperative teams
  • Strengthening leadership presence, emotional regulation, and decision-making in high-stakes environments
  • Leading confidently through change, uncertainty, and organizational transition
  • Improving communication across surgeons, staff, sterile processing, and interdisciplinary teams
  • Implementing onboarding, succession planning, and leadership pipeline development strategies
  • Enhancing operational leadership fundamentals, including turnover time optimization
  • Ensuring safe, compliant practices through effective surgeon credentialing and role clarity

Buisness & Technology Track

  • Preparing for reimbursement changes, including elimination of the Medicare Inpatient Only list
  • Financial survival and growth strategies for rural hospital perioperative departments
  • Capital planning best practices to support strategic expansion and technology investment
  • Supply chain optimization and solutions to today’s vendor and sourcing challenges
  • Mastering vendor and payor negotiations to protect margins
  • Managing labor and equipment costs without compromising quality or access
  • Driving surgical service line profitability and sustainable growth
  • Solving the anesthesia equation to align clinical coverage and financial performance
  • Leveraging performance reporting and dashboards to engage the C-suite and Board
  • Connecting patient experience improvements to measurable financial outcomes

ASC & Outpatient Track

  • Preparing for reimbursement shifts, including new CPT codes and elimination of the Medicare Inpatient Only list
  • Solving anesthesia service and subsidy challenges in the ASC setting
  • Mastering payor negotiations to protect and maximize reimbursement
  • Strengthening inventory asset management, capital planning, and cost control strategies
  • Evaluating ASC joint ventures and strategic growth opportunities
  • Adding new service lines: key do’s, don’ts, and financial considerations
  • Achieving and maintaining survey readiness with insight into what surveyors are looking for
  • Building a strong ASC culture that engages staff and elevates the patient experience
  • Exploring AI use cases in the ASC environment, including workflow and labor impacts
  • Succession planning to ensure long-term leadership stability

Operations, Efficiency & Technology Track

  • Driving first case on-time starts through team-centered accountability strategies
  • Using data-driven insights to optimize OR throughput and perioperative resource utilization
  • Applying AI and predictive analytics to improve forecasting, scheduling, and performance
  • Transforming the OR into a high-performance surgical platform
  • Actively managing daily operations to eliminate bottlenecks and inefficiencies
  • Winning the block time battle with smarter allocation and utilization strategies
  • Leveraging dashboards and command centers to turn perioperative data into action
  • Ensuring successful adoption and ROI from new OR technologies
  • Understanding the operational impact of surgical robotics on workflows and performance
  • Scaling surgical volume while improving patient safety and quality outcomes

Quality, Safety & Regulatory Readiness Track

  • Designing, activating, and safely opening new perioperative environments
  • Strengthening cybersecurity protections to safeguard surgical workflow and patient safety
  • Understanding the legal and regulatory implications of nurse staffing requirements
  • Advancing patient identification practices to eliminate preventable errors
  • Achieving and sustaining year-round survey readiness
  • Building and maintaining a high-reliability organization culture
  • Tracking evolving infection prevention standards
  • Strengthening collaboration between infection prevention and perioperative teams
  • Improving medication safety, sterile technique, environmental hygiene, and audit accountability
  • Protecting staff from sharps injuries, bloodborne exposure, ergonomic risks, and workplace violence
  • Refreshing emergency preparedness plans and aligning safety and quality metrics with performance goals

Ready to find the tools, answers, and allies you need most to succeed in today’s perioperative leadership landscape?

Register today!

Periop Leader Week logo