Quality & Analytics Overview – Theator

Theator gives surgical leaders a connected set of quality and analytics tools to measure surgical quality, track outcomes, and drive improvement across a department. This guide explains what each tool does and when to use it, so you can decide where to look — whether you want a single case's best-practice results, aggregated department metrics, or a summary to share with your team.

Most of these tools live in the Surgical Excellence section of the left sidebar. You can also ask the AI Assistant a question in plain language and let it pull the data for you.

Surgical quality at a glance

Theator measures surgical quality automatically. As each case is processed, Theator's AI analyzes the recording and evaluates whether evidence-based best practices were followed. Those measurements roll up from the individual case to the surgeon and department level, giving both surgeons and clinical leaders an objective, consistent view of practice adoption and outcomes without manual data entry.

SPEQ scores

An SPEQ (Surgical Practice Evaluation and Quality) is a measurable metric that tracks whether a specific best practice was met during a procedure. SPEQs appear on individual case pages under the Surgical practices tab, and they are the building blocks of quality initiatives.

To learn how SPEQs are scored and where they appear, see What is an SPEQ?

Best practices catalog

The Best Practices Catalog is a library of evidence-based surgical practices, organized by specialty and procedure, each with its clinical rationale and best practice adoption rate across your department. Use it to see which practices apply to your work and how consistently they are being followed.

Open it from Surgical Excellence → Catalog. For a full walkthrough, see Exploring Best Practices and the Catalog.

Quality initiatives

A Quality Initiative is a department-level program that tracks adoption of one or more best practices toward a quality improvement goal over time. Initiatives show adoption rates, trends, and breakdowns so you can see whether training or process changes are having an impact.

Open them from Surgical Excellence → Initiatives. You can create an initiative there and define which surgeons, departments, or collections it tracks. For details, see Manage Quality Initiatives.

Department analytics

Department Analytics aggregates quality and efficiency metrics across your whole department, letting clinical leaders compare department metrics by surgeon or department. You can filter by specialty or procedure type and see metrics such as case duration (OR time), best-practice adoption, case volume, and events — making it possible to spot improvement opportunities and support performance benchmarking. For the full metrics list and access guide, see Department Analytics Overview.

Open it from Surgical Excellence → Department Analytics. Visibility is controlled by your organization's admins, not your role — an admin can make it available to everyone, restrict it to admins only, or turn it off entirely.

Ask the AI Assistant for a report

When you want a specific cross-case view, you can ask the AI Assistant in plain language instead of building it by hand. The assistant works within your authorized data scope — it only surfaces cases and metrics you already have permission to see. For example, you can ask it to summarize case volume and outcomes across your department, run a high-level report to share with your team, or suggest and draft a quality initiative for your group. The assistant pulls the matching cases, summarizes the outcomes, and can present the result as a table or chart.

To get started, see Getting Started with the AI Assistant.

What's Next?

What is an SPEQ? — Understand the metric behind every quality score.
Exploring Best Practices and the Catalog — Browse the best practices library and adoption rates.
Manage Quality Initiatives — Create and track department quality improvement programs.
Department Analytics Overview — Aggregate performance data across your surgical department, including access and feature settings.
Getting Started with the AI Assistant — Ask for reports and analytics in plain language.
Case stats — See quality metrics in the context of a single case.