AAMI offers benchmarking on sterile reprocessing
A new benchmarking tool from the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) will help sterile processing departments measure their performance with others across the country. Using the online tool, available by subscription, managers can fill out a survey of more than 130 benchmarking measures on topics such as…
Pain is a growing business for ASCs
The technology of pain relief is improving constantly, and ambulatory surgery centers (ASC) are finding that staying abreast of this growing specialty serves patients as well as their bottom line. For the increasingly complex orthopedic procedures that are migrating to the outpatient setting, pain management is a critical element. Sufferers…
Benchmarking facility times for pain
Pain management procedures have exploded in ambulatory settings, just as GI endoscopy and cataract surgery did previously. More than 1.5 million low-back injections for the treatment of pain or mobility problems are conducted each year, and that number is expected to rise as the population ages. Injections for low back…
New bill would fix ASC payments
A new bill introduced in the US Congress June 3, 2011, if passed, would place ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) on what the ASC industry says is a more equal footing with hospital outpatient departments (HOPDs) in their Medicare payment updates. ASCs currently are reimbursed at 56% of the amount paid…
Updated guideline on CI scope reprocessing
The Multisociety Guideline on Reprocessing Flexible GI Endoscopes has been updated from its original 2003 edition. Among changes: added details on critical reprocessing steps, including cleaning and drying reprocessing issues for scope attachments, such as flushing catheters. There is also discussion of issues that have incomplete data to guide practice,…
FDA approves new drug to treat C diff
The Food and Drug Administration in May 2011 approved the first new drug in 25 years to treat diarrhea caused by Clostridium difficile, a pathogen that one study suggests may have surpassed methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus as the leading hospital-acquired infection, according to the New York Times. In clinical trials, fidaxomicin…
Dangerous bugs on patient, visitor cell phones
Compared with cell phones of hospital staff, those brought into a facility by patients and visitors are twice as likely to carry dangerous, multidrug-resistant pathogens, finds a new study in the American Journal of Infection Control. Turkish researchers analyzed samples from 200 mobile phones—67 belonging to staff and 133 to…
Anesthesia systems catching on as liability concerns start to ease
Anesthesia information management systems (AIMS) have been slow to catch on, but the pace is accelerating. More than one-fourth (26%) of organizations with OR information systems now have an AIMS, up from 6% in 2007. And 63% of those that currently have only an OR system plan to purchase an…
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