Exploring Best Practices and the Catalog – Theator

What Are Best Practices?

Best Practices in Theator represent evidence-based surgical techniques and behaviors that are associated with improved patient outcomes. These practices are defined by clinical experts and measured automatically by Theator's AI as it analyzes your surgical recordings. Examples include achieving a critical view of safety during cholecystectomy or performing a specific dissection technique during a particular procedure.

Accessing the Best Practices Catalog

The Best Practices Catalog is part of the Surgical Excellence section of Theator. To access it:

Click Surgical Excellence in the left sidebar.
Select Catalog. You can also go directly to /surgical-excellence/best-practices/catalog.

Browsing the Catalog

The catalog lists the surgical practices Theator measures for your organization, one row per practice. Each row shows:

Relevant cases — how many cases the practice applied to in the selected period
Adoption rate — the percentage of those cases where the practice was performed
A small trend chart of how adoption has moved over the period
A tag with the procedure family the practice belongs to
The practice name
An Analytics button that opens the practice's detail page

Practices with no relevant cases in the selected period appear greyed out, and their Analytics button is unavailable.

Filtering and sorting

Use the controls above the list to narrow it down:

Use the sort picker to choose Sort: Case volume, Sort: Adoption rate, or Sort: Name (A-Z).
Use the date picker to choose the period the counts cover.
Procedure Type — show only the practices for one procedure family.
Search — match practice names or procedure types.
With Cases — on by default, so the list shows only practices that applied to at least one case in the period. Turn it off to also list practices with no cases.

Depending on your access, you may also see a picker that sets which cases are counted, such as My cases or a specific hospital.

What a practice's Analytics page shows

Select Analytics on a row to open the practice's detail page. It shows the practice's Adoption rate with its case counts, and the Relevant cases and Performed totals. Each total comes with the criteria that decide when a case counts as relevant and when it counts as performed, so you can see exactly what the practice checks for. The page also shows how adoption has trended over time.

How Practices Are Measured

Theator's AI models analyze surgical video recordings to detect whether specific practices were performed during a case. This analysis happens automatically after a case is processed. The platform then aggregates these observations into adoption metrics that you can view at the individual, department, and institutional level.

Because measurement is automated, it provides a consistent, objective view of practice adoption without requiring manual data entry.

Best Practices and SPEQs

Best practices and SPEQs (Surgical Practice Evaluation and Quality metrics) are the same thing: each SPEQ is one measurable best practice. Quality Initiatives group one or more of them, with an adoption goal for each, so a practice you see in the catalog may also be tracked by one or more of your department's initiatives.

To learn more about managing quality initiatives and SPEQs, see Manage Quality Initiatives.

Tips for Using the Catalog

Explore practices outside your primary specialty to discover techniques that may be relevant to your work.
Check your personal adoption rates in the Performance Profile to see how you are doing on specific practices.
Discuss practices with your team to align on which ones to prioritize for quality improvement.
Open a practice's Analytics page to see exactly what it checks for.

The Best Practices Catalog is a valuable reference for anyone looking to understand and improve surgical quality at their institution.

What's Next?

What is an SPEQ? — Learn about Surgical Practice Evaluation and Quality (SPEQ)
Manage Quality Initiatives — Track quality improvement goals