Editor's Note Ambulatory surgery center (ASC) administrators and managers trying to keep pace with the rapid growth in their facilities will not want to miss the robust outpatient surgery education offered at the 2019 OR Manager Conference. On Tuesday, September 17, Beverly Kirchner, BSN, RN, CNOR, CASC, chief compliance officer…

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Editor's Note Retooling paper-based measures to electronic format for reporting performance measures can help reduce hospitals’ reporting burden. However, in this study by Joint Commission and State University of New York researchers, a simplified risk model using electronic health record (EHR) elements could not capture most risk factors in the…

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Editor's Note A new scoring system reveals a strong agreement between patient-reported and physician-reported outcomes after surgery, the Mayo Clinic reports. The study enrolled 100 patients who had elbow or shoulder surgery. The average time between surgery and follow-up was 31 months. In the categorical ratings, patients and physicians agreed…

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Editor's Note The ECRI Institute on June 20 announced that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) had awarded it with the Network of Quality Improvement and Innovation Contractors (NQIIC) designation. With this designation and partnering with other quality improvement contractors under the new CMS Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quanity (IDIQ)…

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Editor's Note A visible-light continuous environmental disinfection (CED) system, used with manual cleaning, resulted in a significant reduction in microbial surface contamination and surgical site infections (SSIs) in an orthopedic OR, in this study. Samples were taken from 25 surfaces within two contiguous ORs sharing an air supply after manual…

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Editor's Note At a precision medicine conference in Boston on June 18, Harvard Law School professor Jonathan Zittrain likened the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare to asbestos, saying: “it’s all over the place, even though at no point did you explicitly install it, and it has possibly some…

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Editor's Note Risk-adjusted surgical outcomes vary widely across hospitals within networks that are on the Honor Roll of the US News & World Report, this study finds. In this analysis of 87 hospitals and 143,174 patients, outcomes were not consistently better at Honor Roll hospitals compared with network affiliates. For…

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Editor's Note Patients whose surgeons had more coworker reports about unprofessional behavior in the 36 months before their surgical procedures had a significantly increased risk of complications, this study finds. In this analysis of 13,653 patients having surgical procedures performed by 202 surgeons in two academic medical centers, 1,583 (11.6%)…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission on June 19 announced that the National Association for Healthcare Quality (NAHQ) has issued a new report−“Key Workforce Competencies for Quality-Driven Healthcare”− that focuses on creating a new framework for competencies needed by healthcare organizations to meet new goals for quality-driven healthcare. Among the competencies:…

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As part of a special series on artificial intelligence (AI), OR Manager is taking a deep dive into the many facets of this new technology and its impact on patient care. Part 1 and Part 2 of the introduction to AI (May 2019 and June 2019) defined types of AI…

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