For the first time, the government has issued a favorable ruling on a spinalfusion surgery gainsharing arrangement between a hospital and physicians. In the ruling, issued July 31, the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) explains why it won't impose sanctions for the arrangement, which could potentially…

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The community turned out to help sandbag at Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. As Mercy Medical Center's OR nurses were readying their patients for their 7:30 am cases on June 12, the Cedar River, some 10 blocks away, was edging dangerously close to the top of its banks.…

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Attending conferences is all about building bridges to transfer ideas from the conference into clinical practice. That's why San Francisco, the city with the Golden Gate Bridge, was a fitting site for the 2008 OR Business Management Conference, a meeting filled with ideas for OR leaders. The 300 attendees chose…

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You've had a value analysis program for a number of years. You think it might have run its course. What's next? Value analysis, which has been in the forefront of supply chain management for years, is a systematic process for making purchasing decisions and identifying savings opportunities that consider not…

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With no margin for error in the operating room supply chain, the cost of obtaining the right products in the right quantities can easily get out of hand. While product prices can be somewhat regulated by contract, in an emergency, there is little point in quibbling over freight charges for…

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After 5 years of planning, Saint Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan, opened its 18 new ORs in November 2006. A year later, physicians, staff, and the project team are happy with the outcome—a sign of success in the planning and design process. The new ORs and postanesthesia care…

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On-time starts for the first case of the day, which had been running at 38%, shot up to 94% within 1 year. Physicians started to participate in decisions about the block schedule. And when capital budget time came, the physicians sat around the table and decided among themselves on spending…

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When you buy a car, you can get a 5-year warranty. A refrigerator and washer and dryer come with a 1-year guarantee. But if a patient has heart bypass surgery and develops a sternal wound infection, not only is there no guarantee, but the patient's insurer will probably be charged…

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Supply chain management doesn't normally conjure images of diamonds and clocks, but it did when Eugene Schneller, PhD, traced the trends in his keynote at the OR Business Management Conference held May 9 to 11 in Savannah, Georgia. Schneller, who is professor and director of health sector supply chain initiatives…

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What's the real value of your value analysis program? Most organizations say they are using value analysis teams to make purchasing decisions, particularly for products that involve physician preference and carry a high price tag. The financial impact is obvious, but value analysis also has intangible benefits because it can…

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