The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is permitting Custom Ultrasonics to resume manufacturing the System 83 Plus Washer/Disinfector and all accessories.
No, the sky isn't falling; at least that's the response of most ambulatory surgery center (ASC) leaders who have examined the first major overhaul of Medicare payments to surgery centers since the mid-1980s.
Hospital-based outpatient departments (HOPDs) providers faces changes in the proposed 2008 outpatient prospective payment system (OPPS) that include bundling intraoperative services, among other services, into the payment for the associated ambulatory payment classification (APC).
Mistakes involving patient classification and preauthorization of procedures are among a lengthy list of common financial errors made in the same-day surgery arena, says Bob Whipple, RNC, CCM, CCS, MHA, a Boston-based senior management consultant with ACS Healthcare Solutions.
Anesthesia providers, especially those who practice in freestanding facilities and offices, are buzzing about a cluster of three hepatitis C infections found in patients who received intravenous anesthesia from the same anesthesiologist based in New York City in August 2006. The anesthesiologist worked at about 10 outpatient practices.
Under updated infection control guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Standard Precautions now include respiratory/cough etiquette instructions.
Managing costs for an outpatient surgery program is an ongoing challenge for all managers, but the challenge is not insurmountable, according to experts interviewed by Same-Day Surgery.
Question: We had a patient die in our operating room last week, and we are all still devastated by it. Administration is running around making sure that everything was done properly and that everyone followed procedure, and it is just terrible.
Ambulatory surgery providers have often raised concerned about nonsurgeons venturing into surgical territory. Now one state has sanctioned the practice.
When an outpatient surgery program has a low surgical site infection rate, it is hard to attribute the low rate to any one activity, but experts interviewed by Same-Day Surgery agree that following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) guidelines for hair removal prior to surgery is a simple step to take as part of an overall program.