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After my security officer is designated and familiar with the HIPAA security rule, what are my next steps toward compliance? What steps are necessary for a proper risk analysis, according to HIPAA? Is a risk analysis and review of security rule compliance a one-time activity?
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Have you ever tracked how you spend your time? While boring, it can be useful information to have. I thought that it would be interesting to see what some of my operating room associates do with their time. We set up a task sheet to track this information.
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Like many outpatient surgery programs, Mount Nittany Surgical Center in State College, PA, has a limited budget and always is trying to stretch its educational dollars as far as possible.
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On the fifth anniversary of the Institute of Medicines 1999 report on the high number of medical errors in this country, 66% of consumers surveyed said that they have talked to a surgeon about details of a proposed surgery to reduce the risk of experiencing a medical error when seeking treatment.
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When a woman living near Lima, OH, started a service to provide free surgery to needy people overseas, she found a willing partner at nearby West Central Ohio Surgery and Endoscopy Center in Lima. The organization, called Childrens Medical Missions, sent a photo of a 10-year-old African boy needing a hernia operation to the center. She told the center a little about the child, and they decided to offer the surgery.
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Six states have enacted legislation supporting creation of state patient safety centers, and four of those states (Florida, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Pennsylvania) will focus on ambulatory surgery centers. All six, which also include Maryland and New York, will focus on hospitals. A recent report from the National Academy for State Health Policy in Portland, ME, examined the models in use in the six states.
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The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) will recommend to Congress that the moratorium on development of specialty hospitals, including surgical hospitals, be extended by 20 months to Jan. 1, 2007.
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An outpatient surgery patient called back after discharge with complaints that indicated significant internal bleeding, but the staff member who answered the phone didnt recognize the signs and didnt refer the person to emergency care or a physician. By the next day, the patient had died.
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Determining the best way to sterilize and repair a flexible endoscopes damage after its been used to check an airplane gas tank for leaks is not a problem that most same-day surgery managers encounter. Staff members and physicians understand more about the fragile nature of scopes than they did 15 years ago, when this incident occurred at a hospital-based outpatient surgery program.
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The average surgical corridor looks like the ending scenes in a disaster movie where all the actors claim, We can rebuild it and make it better than it was. Look around your facility, and you will see what Im talking about: a mess. Over the months and years, our eyes have filtered it out. We minimize the optical clutter, but it still is there.
