Same-Day Surgery – December 1, 2004
December 1, 2004
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Should nonobstetric outpatient surgery be performed on a pregnant patient?
You work at a freestanding surgery center across from a medical center. A surgeon wants to schedule an incision and drainage (I&D) of a breast abscess on a pregnant patient scheduled for an elective cesarean in a few days. Your anesthesiologist is hesitant and cites concerns about inducing labor and, more importantly, fetal distress. What do you do? -
Hospital OPDs receive 3.3% inflation update
Starting Jan. 1, hospitals will receive a 3.3% inflation update in payment rates for services provided in outpatient departments (OPDs), under a final rule from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). -
Same-Day Surgery Manager
Last month, I received a number of e-mails about issues related to staffing both with hospital departments and ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs). The questions and, I hope, the answers might benefit others. -
Removals increase as tattoo popularity rises
Tattoos are no longer associated only with gang members and musicians or actors. While tattoos have less of a stigma than in the past, experts interviewed by Same-Day Surgery say that they continue to see an increase in their tattoo removal business. -
Home Alone good for a movie, not for seniors
Your older patient who lives alone did arrange for transportation to and from your surgery program, but youve just discovered that the driver has no intention of staying with the patient once he or she gets the patient home. -
Microwave therapies provide relief for BPH
New treatments that can be performed in an office-based surgery setting for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), also known as enlarged prostate, are improving patient comfort and providing more lasting results, according to experts interviewed by Same-Day Surgery. -
Survey reveals hospital outpatient surgery decline
In a continuation of a trend of outpatient surgical procedures moving from hospitals to surgery centers and physician offices, hospitals reported a 1.1% decline in the percentage of outpatient surgeries performed at hospitals in 2003, the first drop in more than two decades, according to the latest annual survey from the American Hospital Association (AHA). -
Members of Congress seek moratorium extension
Forty-eight U.S. representatives and senators have sent a letter to House Republican and Democratic leaders in which they note that the moratorium on the growth of specialty hospitals imposed by the Medicare Modernization Act expires in June 2005, and they said its imperative that Congress be poised to address the issue early next year.