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| Fired Tech Claims Nurse Manager Worked Case With Fecal Matter Pouring Down Her Legs |
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Among the unsafe and unsanitary conditions in the ORs at an Arizona hospital, according to a recently filed lawsuit: A nurse manager who "actually defecated inside her clothes during a surgery and continued to work with fecal matter pouring down her legs and onto the floor."
In her wrongful termination suit, Susan Gipson, a 5-year surgical tech of the Banner Thunderbird Medical Center in Glendale, says she reported rusty surgical instruments, bugs in operating room lights, holes in walls, dirt and mold in vents and blood and body fluids "strewn around" operating rooms to the hospital's infection control department. The paper is reporting that Ms. Gipson included in her lawsuit 21 color photographs she allegedly took at the hospital to support her claims. The photos show bugs, expired medicine, vials of narcotics stored in the open, mold on fixtures and dirt.
When Ms. Gipson's nurse manager learned about Ms. Gipson's complaint, she assaulted her, according to a news report. Ms. Gipson says hospital administration demoted her in 2007 and fired her the following year for "performance deficiencies."
A Banner Health official denies these charges. "The claims in this lawsuit are invalid," spokesman Bill Byron told the Arizona Republic. "Banner Health is committed to maintaining sterile and safe patient environments."
Kent Steinriede |
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| 2009 Salary Survey: Are You Making Enough? |
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Think about the responsibilities you have, the budgets and employees you manage and the number of hours you spend on the job. Now think about how much you're compensated. Does it seem like enough?
For Outpatient Surgery Magazine's 7th annual salary survey, we're inviting you to share your thoughts on the duties and compensation of surgical facility administrators and their staffs. Look for the results in the January issue and see how your earnings stack up compared to those of your colleagues.
ASC employees: Click here to take the survey.
Hospital employees: Click here to take the survey.
Completing the survey will automatically enter you into a drawing to win a free Outpatient Surgery Magazine t-shirt. Thank you for your participation.
Irene Tsikitas |
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| Agencies Urge Proper Endoscope Processing |
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In response to recent reports of flexible endoscope processing errors, 3 government agencies are advising healthcare facilities to develop better procedures to ensure that these instruments are properly cleaned, disinfected and sterilized.
The Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Department of Veterans Affairs outline their recommendations in a joint safety communication issued after the FDA received reports of "the use of improper accessories for endoscopy irrigation set-ups, improper reprocessing intervals for reusable endoscopy accessories, failure to discard single use accessories, and failure to follow the manufacturer's instructions for endoscope reprocessing."
To prevent these errors and avoid the risk of cross-contamination, the agencies urge healthcare facilities to establish comprehensive safety and quality assurance programs that outline responsibilities for handling and processing scopes, provide for the adequate training and retraining of staff and "establish a chain of accountability for endoscope processing procedures."
The recommendations place a heavy emphasis on the importance of manually and thoroughly cleaning flexible endoscopes immediately after their use and before they are disinfected and sterilized. Endoscopes or accessories that contact sterile tissue or the vascular system must undergo sterilization, and those that contact intact mucous membranes, such as the respiratory or GI tracts, must undergo at least high-level disinfection before each use. Facilities are advised to verify that the disinfection agents and equipment used to process endoscopes match the instructions provided by each scope's manufacturer.
Any deaths or serious injuries associated with endoscopes or scope processing must be reported to the FDA. The agencies also recommend that facilities voluntarily report any adverse events that don't meet the requirements for mandatory reporting to the equipment's manufacturer or to MedWatch.
Irene Tsikitas |
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| InstaPoll: How's Business in '09? |
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Tell us how your case volume is this year compared to 2008 - the year when even elective surgery, thought to be recession-proof, felt the nation's economic woes - in this week's InstaPoll. We'll report the results in this space next week.
Last week, we asked which surgeons make the smoothest transition into an ASC. The eyes have it, is what you told us. Forty percent of our 72 respondents say ophthalmologists make the easiest conversion from a hospital to an ASC. Pain docs were next, at 21%, followed closely by GI (19%) and ENT (16%).
"[Ophthalmologists] simply relay to their scheduler where they now wish to perform their surgery and walk out of the hospital, never looking back," says Tyler P. Merrill, a vice president of business development for Ambulatory Surgical Centers of America. "It is a perfect marriage and their commitment to the center is instantly realized."
Dan O'Connor |
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| News & Notes |
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Tip of the week A California surgery center offers its staff an attractive incentive for developing ways to reduce operating costs: Split the resulting savings with them. Roy Kim, MD, of the San Francisco Surgery Center writes that the staff member who suggested a closer examination of shipping, postage and water delivery charges was rewarded with a check for $2,750, half of what the facility saved after cutting those costs.
EMR cost benefits questioned Harvard Medical School researchers found no connection between the adoption of EMRs and healthcare cost savings, according to a study published in the online edition of the American Journal of Medicine. The researchers' review of approximately 4,000 hospitals that adopted EMR technology between 2003 and 2007 was based on data from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, hospital reports on costs incurred through the Medicare insurance program for the elderly and the 2008 Dartmouth Health Atlas. They conclude that health information technology, as currently implemented, has a modest impact on process measures of quality, but no impact on administrative efficiency or overall costs. The study notes that predictions of cost-savings and efficiency improvements from the widespread adoption of EMRs are premature at best.
Court supports N.J. ASCs A New Jersey appeals court has upheld a lower court's ruling that sided with physicians and their ASC over an insurer which had sued the in-network docs for their out-of-network center's billings. The appeals court's Nov. 17 decision will prevent insurers from blocking patient access to out-of-network providers and vindicate physician ownership in ASCs, say attorneys John Fanburg and Mark Manigan of the Roseland, N.J., firm Brach Eichler. The insurer's 2007 lawsuit incidentally called the legality of physician self-referral into question and led to amendments in New Jersey's Codey Law, which regulates the practice.
ASCs flourish in Pa. The number of surgery centers and of outpatient procedures performed in Pennsylvania both continue to rise, reports the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council. It says 17 new ASCs opened and 3 closed between June 2008 and May 2009, bringing the statewide total to 261. ASC profits increased in fiscal year 2008, according to the PHC4, which notes the statewide average total margin rose by 1.75 percentage points. That jump continues a 7-year trend that saw total margins increase by 14.64 percentage points. Over the past 8 years, outpatient surgical and diagnostic procedures increased by 65.1%, with 62.8% of that growth occurring in ASCs instead of acute care hospitals. Joe Martin, executive director of the PHC4, says the number of ASCs in the state has quadrupled over the past decade and the facilities remain profitable overall. |
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