Same-Day Surgery – June 1, 2015
June 1, 2015
View Issues
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Price transparency is growing, but hear lessons from frontrunners first
Patients traditionally have come in for outpatient surgery, then you would send them a bill. The patients might be surprised by the price, but they usually would pay.
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Guide offers information about outpatient providers and charges
The Consumer Guide to Outpatient Procedures from Virginia Health Information in Richmond offers information about commonly performed outpatient procedures and where they are performed in the state.
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Double jeopardy: Hospitals, surgeons dinged twice by CMS for surgical infections, readmissions
Surgical site infections are a costly twice-told tale, as surgeons and hospitals are penalized when they occur and again if the patient is readmitted.
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Disruptive behavior isn’t always addressed, either in policy or in practice
Despite the fact that The Joint Commission issued a Sentinel Event Alert in 2008 on behaviors that undermine a culture of safety, disruptive behavior remains a troubling problem in healthcare.
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Primary care physicians are investing in ambulatory surgery centers
How this trend eventually will play out is fairly easy to predict. Tenet and others will continue to gobble up facilities worthy of their lofty requirements, and the more they acquire, the greater their appetite for more will grow.
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ECRI Institute’s top patient safety concerns include scope reprocessing
ECRI Institute’s second annual list of the top 10 patient safety concerns for healthcare organizations includes inadequate reprocessing of endoscopes and surgical instruments.
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Telephone counseling reduces pain and disability in patients after spinal surgery
Research by Johns Hopkins scientists suggests that having a short series of phone conversations with trained counselors can substantially boost recovery and reduce pain in patients after spinal surgery.
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Medicare patients undergo unnecessary tests before cataract surgery, study finds
More than half of all Medicare patients who have cataract surgery undergo unnecessary routine preoperative testing, despite strong evidence that these tests usually are not beneficial and increase national healthcare costs, says a New England Journal of Medicine study.
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Are you using health IT safely? If not, it could lead to sentinel events, TJC warns
IT records must fit the case. Consider this example: A surgeon used one common note for each basic appendectomy procedure in his health information technology system.
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Guidance for ambulatory surgery on obese patients
The AAAHC Institute for Quality Improvement has released a toolkit to prevent intraoperative and postoperative complications for obese patients who might be undergoing ambulatory surgery.
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AAAHC Institute for QI offers patient safety toolkits
The AAAHC Institute for Quality Improvement designs tools to improve the quality of healthcare, including patient safety toolkits to provide an overview of evidence-based information, references, and patient assessment tools.
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Video educates patients on preparing for surgery
Healthcare organizations and providers have access to a new video from The Joint Commission, Speak Up: When You’re Having Surgery, to share with their patients.
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Self-register to access Joint Commission Connect
Self-registration for The Joint Commission Connect makes “guest access” quick and easy.