There's a new abbreviation you will be hearing as part of health care reform—ACOs, or accountable care organizations. An ACO could be entering your ambulatory surgery center's local market. Encouraged under the health care reform bill signed in March 2010, ACOs are a strategy for curbing the rapid growth in…

Read More

Is there a shortage of anesthesia providers now? Does the nation face a shortage in the future? The answer for the current labor supply is: It depends on your area and whether your facility is urban or rural. The anesthesia labor supply and practice patterns vary dramatically, a new indepth…

Read More

First in a series on OR performance. How can you make progress on on-time starts? Are you attracting the right cases to meet your volume and revenue projections? How can you manage block utilization more consistently? The first answer to these persistent questions is good OR governance and a strong…

Read More

There's a tax on income, on gasoline, and on a new car you buy. They're even talking about a tax on soft drinks. But there's a hidden tax you may not be aware of—the tax on trust—that can undermine your effectiveness as a manager. Max Brown When trust is high…

Read More

Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland, was known locally as an excellent "baby" hospital at a time when the community population was aging. Deciding to broaden its scope to better serve the community, leaders at Holy Cross decided to expand the hospital's expertise in gerontology, opening its Seniors Emergency…

Read More

Reprocessing of single-use devices is now mainstream, with an estimated 70% of US hospitals using single-use devices reprocessed by third-party companies, according to industry figures. In an opinion piece in the March 2010 Academic Medicine, authors from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine call reprocessing a "common sense strategy"…

Read More

Over the 8 years from 2001 to 2009, the cost of a lumbar spinal fusion with implants rose from under $6,000 to over $14,000 per case, with a small decline of 2% between 2008 and 2009. This was the second year in a row that the implant cost per case…

Read More

A pilot pneumonia prevention program significantly reduced postoperative pneumonia in a hospital postsurgical unit. "Postoperative pneumonia is a problem facilities face continually, but our research shows simple steps in prevention can have a substantial effect," says Sherry Wren, MD, FACS, chief of general surgery at the Veterans Affairs (VA) Palo…

Read More