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I had the pleasure of touring several facilities since last month. Three surgery centers and two hospital surgical departments stand out.
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There are some situations that come up repeatedly in ambulatory surgery settings that can be life threatening, warns Anne Dean Schilling, RN, BSN, consultant with The ADA Group, a DeLand, FL-based consulting firm specializing in ambulatory surgical development and regulatory compliance.
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When a patient death occurs in outpatient surgery, you do have a choice about whether you report the occurrence to The Joint Commission.
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With almost 49% of the respondents to the 2007 Same-Day Surgery Salary Survey reporting that their staff sizes have increased during the past year, the challenge of recruiting new employees and retaining experienced employees grows and is exacerbated by the nursing shortage and the aging of the work force.
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Imagine a communitywide outbreak so pervasive that employees fell ill at work, 40% called in sick, and even the chief nursing executive pitched in to work as a staff nurse.
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One of the benefits of sponsoring community events or open houses is increasing awareness of your facility's name in a positive light. While most outpatient surgery program managers are pleased with direct contact with business leaders, referring physicians, potential patients, and community members, media coverage increases the audience that learns about the program.
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Surgeons have long been reluctant to use blunt suture needles, but new messages from the American College of Surgeons (ACS), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) may get their attention. Those organizations are actively promoting the use of blunt suture needles.
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Many health care providers are formally adopting policies that state they will not bill patients or insurers for the worst type of mistakes known as "never events" because they should never happen. One example is intraoperative or immediately postoperative death in an ASA Class I patient.
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Salaries for case management are increasing, but the vast majority of case managers are working far more than the traditional 40-hour week, according to the results of the 2007 Case Management Advisor Salary Survey.
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The "yes-means-no" phenomenon was one of several challenges encountered by the team conducting a community case management pilot project for diabetes patients in Nogales, AZ, says Donna Zazworsky, RN, MS, CCM, FAAN, diabetes care center manager for the Tucson-based Carondelet Health Network.