We can predict much in life now. The health care industry has diagnostic tools to detect many forms of cancer, heart disease, and other life-threatening illnesses. Meteorologists can chart a mass of low pressure off the coast of Africa and reasonably predict when it will strike Florida.
Following several recent adverse events, a special advisory panel is being brought together again in New York to recommend more ways to improve safety and outcomes in office-based surgery.
When reviewing your handoff communication process, dont just focus on the handoff between clinical areas such as the operating room and the post-anesthesia care unit (PACU).
In all of your disaster planning, did you imagine that you might have to climb onto the roof in the middle of a hurricane to ensure water drains away and doesnt collapse the roof?
Like many people after Hurricane Katrina, the staff members at HealthSouth St. Augustine (FL) Surgery Center were feeling devastated and helpless.
The National Fire Protection Association has approved a change to its regulation allowing hospitals and surgery centers to use alcohol-based skin preps during all procedures, including those involving cautery or electrosurgery, as long as providers follow the amended regulation.
Are your history and physicals (H&Ps) updated and documented within 24 hours of the procedure? Is communication clear when you are handing off patients from one area to another, such as from the OR to post-op? If not, and you work at a hospital or freestanding surgery center, you are violating requirements from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
Organizations looking for additional guidance on risk analysis and management can find a new educational paper on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) web site.
A wrong-site, wrong-procedure, and wrong-person universal protocol has been required by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations since July 2004 and supported by multiple national organizations, but adverse events continue.
