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At a time when surgery centers are facing Medicare changes and proposed freezes that are causing a seemingly endless financial struggle, a standoff that developed between a private payer and a surgery center chain in Ohio is causing some centers to call foul.
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Andrew Cuomo, the New York state attorney general, is going to sue UnitedHealth Group and four of its subsidiaries, including Ingenix, on allegations that they defrauding consumers by manipulating reimbursement rates, according to the American Hospital Association (AHA).
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Basic infection control practices are being reviewed in light of six cases of hepatitis C that have been linked with a surgery center in Las Vegas that reportedly reused syringes, with new needles, and reused single-dose vials.
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I'm following up on my last column in which I urged surgical programs to include surgeons in decision-making processes to help hospitals and surgery centers alike function better and become more cost-efficient. Talk is cheap, so here are some real-life examples:
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Identification and reduction of potential adverse events and patient safety risks are required by all accreditation organizations, but not all outpatient managers look at using information from near misses to develop performance improvement projects to address risks.
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It wasn't a surgical procedure that almost tripped up the staff at Blue Ridge Surgery Center. It was a pain procedure, says Suzanne L. Broome, RN, director of the Seneca, SC, facility.
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Improper infection control practices at a surgery center in Las Vegas that led to a hepatitis C outbreak, plus the nation's largest number of patient contacts 40,000 for blood exposure, may be replicated at other health care facilities across the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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Regardless of the specifics of an individual contract, outpatient surgery providers are facing decreased reimbursement overall, says Anne Dean Schilling, RN, BSN, consultant with The ADA Group in DeLand, FL. This reduction means you need to reduce overhead, she says.
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Every year in the United States, about 1,500 people have surgical items accidentally left inside them following a surgical procedure.1 About two-thirds of these items are sponges, which can lead to pain, infection, difficulty healing, and additional surgeries.
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The impact of medical devices on the cost of health care was one of the topics addressed at this year's National Health Policy Conference, but, typical for such gatherings, no answers were clearly established.
