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| Hospital Directors Outearn ASC Admins: But Should They? |
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Hospitals' surgical directors earned an average of $223,711 (including bonus and overtime pay) in 2008, while their administrator counterparts at ASCs averaged only $97,119, according to Outpatient Surgery Magazine's sixth annual salary survey.
The survey results, published in January's issue alongside "How to Get the Raise You Deserve," a guide for negotiating your salary in uncertain economic times, polled 575 respondents - 423 from ASCs and 152 from hospitals - on their views of the surgery employment market.
The survey also found that:
Hospital directors of nursing earn, on average, $119,386; hospital OR managers and supervisors, $84,383.
25.8 percent of hospital directors earn more than $100,000; 18.5 percent earn between $90,001 and $100,000; 15.2 percent between $80,001 and $90,000; 14.6 percent between $60,001 and $70,000; 13.9 percent between $70,001 and $80,000 and 6 percent each earn less than $50,000 and between $50,001 and $60,000.
32.8 percent of ASC administrators earn more than $100,000; 17.6 percent earn between $70,001 and $80,000; 16.8 percent between $90,001 and $100,000; 14 percent between $80,001 and $90,000; 9.4 percent between $60,001 and $70,000; 5.3 percent earn less than $50,000 and 4.1 percent between $50,001 and $60,000.
While 84.2 percent of hospital directors received a raise in 2008, only 52.3 percent say they plan to ask for one in 2009.
In ASCs, 68.9 percent of administrators earned raised in 2008 and 68 percent say they plan to ask for one in 2009.
A recent OutpatientSurgery.net online poll suggests that either ASC administrators are underpaid, or that running a surgery center is more daunting work than running a hospital's surgical service. Out of 57 responses to the question "Who should be paid more?" 58 percent chose the ASC administrator over the hospital surgical services director.
Outpatient Surgery Staff |
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| HHS Unveils Infection Prevention Plan |
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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has issued a set of five-year national targets for the prevention of healthcare-associated infections which, despite being largely preventable, remain one of the nation's 10 leading causes of death, it says.
The Action Plan to Prevent Healthcare-Associated Infections targets six categories of infections, including surgical site infections, Clostridium difficile and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
In devising the plan, the authors identified seven metrics associated with each type of HAI and a corresponding five-year target for each metric. For example, one target for SSI prevention calls for a 95 percent adherence rate to Surgical Care Improvement Project / National Quality Forum infection process measures, including perioperative antibiotics, hair removal and normothermia.
In addition to the five-year targets, the plan calls for the development of national benchmarks, recommended clinical practices and an electronic reporting system for healthcare facilities. It also recommends ways of improving "regulatory oversight of hospitals and CMS oversight of the hospital accreditation program."
The HHS maintains that "a systemic approach to reducing the transmission of disease can be more effective than disease-specific approaches," and that "the education of best practices for providers and other healthcare personnel is critical to prevent HAIs."
The agency is accepting comments on the plan via e-mail until Feb. 6, 2009, and plans to hold public meetings to discuss it this spring.
Irene Tsikitas |
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| Study: Nurses Want a Role in Error Disclosures |
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Nurses are often excluded when physicians disclose serious errors in care to patients, even though they want to be included in the conversations, claims a Joint Commission study.
The study, which appears in the Jan. 9 issue of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, reports that nurses discuss mistakes with patients that are within their control, like missed medications, but hesitate to broach errors that lead to serious harm or involve other members of the clinical care team. While physicians are often charged with communicating directly to patients when serious errors occur, the researchers report that nurses want to be included in the disclosure process in order to convey nursing's role in adverse events and to avoid being blamed for them.
"Improving the quality of error disclosure to patients is a top priority in health care," says Sarah E. Shannon, PhD, RN, vice associate dean for academic services in the University of Washington School of Nursing, associate professor of behavioral nursing and health systems at the University of Washington and lead author of the study.
She says clinical teams need to continue to work as a unit throughout the error disclosure process by quickly assessing why the errors occurred, what can be done to prevent future errors and reviewing what the patient has been told, will be told and when they'll be told it. Her research team suggests that nurses should receive training on how to discuss clinical mishaps with patients and that facilities should develop policies to include nurses in the error disclosure process, which would help improve nurses' job satisfaction and retention rates, the researchers say.
Daniel Cook |
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| News & Notes |
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Tip of the week How accessible is your staff to a patient's family? One California hospital prints business cards for its perioperative staffers, including their names and unit numbers, to distribute to the caregivers in the waiting room in the event they have to leave the facility. "It's an easy way for them to remember whom they dealt with or how to reach us, whether they're seeking information on the day of surgery or sending comments afterward," wrote Dolores Holland, RN, CNOR, of the Clovis Community Hospital, in our December 2005 issue.
Nursing shortage growing The number of open nursing positions is expected to increase by about 233,000 annually over the next seven years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That figure, cited by a recent Associated Press report, can be attributed to difficult working conditions, a lack of qualified instructors and funding for training programs, nurses leaving the profession and a diminishing number of candidates passing the registered nurse licensing program each year to replace them.
CDC examines hepatitis outbreaks The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that outpatient healthcare facilities' failure to follow proper infection control practices put more than 60,000 patients at risk for hepatitis B and hepatitis C over the past 10 years. In a review of outbreak reports, published in the Jan. 6 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, the agency finds that 12 of the 33 hepatitis outbreaks that occurred outside of hospitals between 1998 and 2008 came from outpatient clinics. Reused syringes and blood-contaminated medication, equipment and devices were identified as the main culprits in many of the outbreaks.
Correction Craig Alan Bittner, the former medical director of Beverly Hills Liposculpture in Beverly Hills, Calif., is not a cosmetic surgeon, as was reported last week, but a diagnostic radiologist who practiced liposuction. |
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