Archive > Infection Control 2006
The Economics of Decontamination and Sterilization
When it comes to reprocessing, you can't have one without the other.
Steve Johnson
Imagine this: In the OR, an orthopedic surgeon finds that the cannulated drill bit she is using has a guide wire stuck in it from a previous case. Now flecks of hardened, autoclaved blood from another patient have just contaminated her patient's wound. She stops the case to provide treatment for wound contamination. Suddenly the procedure is taking longer, the surgeon is angry, the patient is compromised and your cost to do that case has rocketed. All this because the 30-second step of checking and cleaning the lumen of a drill bit - a task that would have cost all of 20 or 30 cents to do right in the first place - was neglected.
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