Advances in technology have led to shorter patient stays, improved outcomes, and the feasibility of performing more procedures on an outpatient basis. That means ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) need to continually reevaluate their procedure mix to be sure they are not missing out on potential business. Though taking on new…

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Bacterial contamination is common on the hands of anesthesia providers, with high rates of transmission to the surgical field, a new study finds. "As anesthesiologists, we like to think the surgical drapes protect the patient from tens of trillions of microorganisms that are in and on our bodies. Nope!" says…

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What is your facility type? Number of scheduled ORs Community hospitals Academic hospitals 1-4 ORs 26% 10% 5-9 ORs 42% 19% 10+ ORs 32% 71% The standard staffing pattern for a surgical case is one scrub person and one circulating RN. But there are many situations for which ORs assign…

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Medical-surgical supplies are essential to the delivery of health care. That is why even small hospitals usually have a staff member who is in charge of ordering, buying, stocking, and distributing the thousands of supplies and who knows how to manage vendors and negotiate contracts. Larger hospitals have high-level executives…

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Technology is starting to take its place as a supplement to manual counts in the effort to prevent retained surgical items (RSIs). RSIs persist despite the emphasis many ORs have placed on tightening their manual counting methods. Recent reports from California are an example of the challenge ORs are up…

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Hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers (ASC) will receive small rate increases for outpatient services under the Medicare Outpatient Prospective Payment System rule for calendar year 2011. Hospitals face new quality reporting requirements, but none of the new measures is directly related to surgery. ASC quality reporting was postponed once again.…

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The term "flash sterilization" is going away. The new term is "immediate use sterilization." The new term better describes the process employed to steam sterilize items intended to be used immediately and not stored, say those who have worked on a joint position statement on immediate use sterilization. The statement,…

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Surprisingly, patients are just as susceptible to a wrong-site procedure outside the OR as they are in surgery, a new study finds. Also surprising: Nonsurgical specialties contributed to patient injuries from wrong-site procedures as much as surgical specialties did. The only death in the cases analyzed was from a patient…

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