Survey shows assigning extra staff to OR cases is widespread
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…
Best ASC supply chain practices
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…
Preventing retained items: Time to consider technology?
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…
Small outpatient pay updates in 2011
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.…
Term 'flash sterilization' to go away
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,…
Wrong-site errors as likely outside OR
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…
Understanding tissue processing
Third in a series on managing bone allografts. In the October issue, articles included were Allografts: Overview of the process; and Donor screening: First step in safety. In the November issue, articles included Help in evaluating bone allografts; Bone allografts: Options for healing; and Making good choices of DBM products.…
Onboarding: Evaluating new RNs
Fourth in a series on selecting and hiring perioperative nurses and integrating them into the staff. So far, this series on onboarding has taken us from developing selection criteria to making a job offer through the initial phase of employment. The onboarding process for new OR circulators involves 14 steps…
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