Same-Day Surgery – October 1, 2007
October 1, 2007
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Wrong-site surgery is No. 1 among sentinel events — Are you at risk?
For the fist time since The Joint Commission began keeping records of sentinel events in 1996, wrong-site surgery has reached the No. 1 position over patient suicide in terms of cumulative data. There have been 552 reports of wrong-site surgery, yet it is viewed as an event that often is underreported.Proposed conditions would take extra time
Do you and your staff have an extra 55 hours a year? That's the amount of time the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) estimates that you and your ambulatory surgery center (ASC) staff would spend complying with new and revised Conditions for Coverage (CfC) for ASCs.Assess anticoagulants to meet new requirement
Compliance with The Joint Commission's National Patient Safety Goal (NPSG) 3 in 2008 will require accredited organizations to pay close attention to their assessment and monitoring of patients who are on anticoagulation therapy.It's 'yes' for artificial nails, but not in the OR
You have switched from razors to clippers to remove hair, you developed strict, scientifically based protocols for administration of prophylactic antibiotics, and your staff scrub their hands in the proper manner. Although all of these steps reduce the risk of infection in the operating room, have you checked your staff's nails?You are invited — ASCs open doors to public
This is the first of a two-part series on sponsoring community events and open houses. In this month's issue, we cover open houses. In next month's issue, we will give suggestions for handling the media.SDS Accreditation Update: Medication safety tops list of surveyors' focus
Patient safety goals and all standards related to patient safety top the list of items focused upon by The Joint Commission surveyors, according to outpatient managers surveyed during recent months.SDS Accreditation Update: A surveyor at your door? Senior managers out?
One of the first steps to take for a successful survey is to make sure that staff members who know the location of all documents needed by the surveyor are at work when the surveyor arrives.SDS Accreditation Update: Reconciliation form should show stop, start dates
Anyone can make a list of medications dictated by a patient, but to fully comply with The Joint Commission's requirement to reconcile medications taken by your patient, your documentation needs to address more than just the name of the medication.Patient Safety Alert supplement