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| Outpatient Surgery Magazine Launches Online Message Board |
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Outpatient Surgery Magazine has launched the first and only discussion board created specifically for surgical facility managers. It's called "Second Opinions," and it's located on our Web site.
Particpiating couldn't be easier. If you've registered to view content on our Web site, you're already registered to contribute to the discussion board. All you have to do is choose how your name will appear: You can promote as much notoriety or preserve as much anonymity as you choose. If you've not registered on our Web site, it takes about 5 minutes to do so, and it's free.
"Second Opinions" aims to provide a way for the nearly 20,000 individuals who use Outpatient Surgery's Web site each month to network with and seek advice from one another. After all, who's more qualified to understand the issues involved in running a surgical facility than your professional peers? And some of your most knowledgeable peers are regular visitors to our site. Grappling with an issue? Got an experience to share? Able to help solve a colleague's challenge? Bring it to "Second Opinions."
Even if you choose not to participate right away, it's an educational and even fun way to find out what the industry's buzzing about, what issues your peers are facing and the advice that's being offered.
Dan O'Connor |
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| HHS to Spend $9 Million Against Infections |
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About 1,300 non-accredited ambulatory surgery centers in 43 states can expect a visit from a state surveyor over the next 12 months thanks to $9 million in federal stimulus funds the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has earmarked to promote infection prevention practices, federal officials say.
The funding, supplied by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed earlier this year, follows an earlier injection against infection. The surveying program was prompted by well-publicized outbreaks of healthcare-acquired infections, including hepatitis C and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
"Patients who go to stand-alone surgical centers will have greater assurance that they won't come home with a new infection," says HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in a press release issued last week.
Kent Steinriede |
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| Washington Nurse Sentenced for Stealing Demerol |
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A recovery room nurse at a Bellevue, Wash., plastic surgery ASC was sentenced in federal court to 366 days' imprisonment earlier this month for engaging in product tampering to divert Demerol.
Drea Lynne Gibson, 43, who worked at the Plastic Surgery Center from 2003 until 2008, was also ordered to complete 3 years of supervised release following her incarceration.
According to prosecutors, Ms. Gibson admitted to the thefts which, driven by addiction, began as she drank leftover portions of the opioid analgesic from glass ampules and reported them as waste, and eventually led to her breaking ampules open, consuming the contents, refilling them with saline and resealing them with instant glue.
You can read more about this case, and about the issue of drug abuse among healthcare providers, in the cover story of the upcoming December issue of Outpatient Surgery Magazine.
David Bernard |
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| InstaPoll: Which Surgeons Are the Best Fit for ASCs? |
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Looking for a no-muss, no-fuss specialty to add to your surgical center? You might want to consider which surgeons will make the smoothest transition into an ASC environment, says Tyler P. Merrill, a vice president of business development for Ambulatory Surgical Centers of America.
"Consider the ease of recruitment and the speed with which the surgeons have proven they can ramp up their cases in a surgical center," says Mr. Merrill. Vote for the breed of surgeon you believe to be most compliant in this week's InstaPoll. We'll report the results in this space next week.
Last week, we asked if your facility was experiencing a propofol shortage. More than four-fifths (83%) of the 95 facility managers who replied said they were.
Dan O'Connor |
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| News & Notes |
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Tip of the week In terms of sexual harassment in the workplace, "perception - the victim's, yours, the court's and the jury's - is important," writes Mark Peters, JD, of the Nashville, Tenn., law firm Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis. Taking 3 steps, however, can help to improve perceptions of your facility's response to the incident and reduce its exposure. Draft and disseminate an anti-harassment policy and reporting process, quickly and thoroughly investigate complaints and try to resolve the issue with fairness and privacy.
Miscommunication cited in errors The persistence of communication problems in the OR mean that pre-op time outs, as they've been performed, might not be sufficient to prevent serious adverse events from occurring, say Veterans Health Administration researchers in the November issue of the journal Archives of Surgery. They reviewed 342 events reported between 2001 and 2006 at 130 VHA facilities, including 212 surgical procedures performed unnecessarily - wrong-site or wrong-patient surgery, for example - and 130 close calls. Approximately half of the reported events occurred in the OR, leading the researchers to conclude that surgical professionals should discuss key procedure information before patients enter the OR, and should base their pre-op communication on aviation crew resource management programs.
Laparoscopy for rectal cancer Surgeons at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, N.Y., have reported a high success rate in their use of laparoscopic surgery to remove cancerous cells from the rectums of 103 patients. While laparoscopic surgery for rectal cancer has previously shown mixed results in medical literature due to the difficulty of operating in the pelvic area, this 7-year study, published in the July issue of the journal Diseases of the Colon & Rectum, reported that 95% of patients emerged with intact and functioning rectums, with a 91% survival rate and 73% of patients free of rectal cancer after 5 years. |
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