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Despite Sentinel Event Alerts and partnerships between The Joint Commission and professional organizations, wrong-site surgeries continue at a national rate as high as 40 times per week, according to Mark Chassin, MD, MPP, MPH, president of The Joint Commission and the Center for Transforming Healthcare.
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Payers are asking for more preauthorizations, even for services that previously didn't require them, reports Connie Campbell, director of patient access of Mercy Medical Center in Oshkosh, WI.
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Managers at surgery centers have learned that, similar to a Code Blue, you must react quickly when you have a water leak to prevention serious damage, including mold.
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A Texas hospital, its parent company, two surgical nurses, a nurse anesthetist, and a surgical tech are facing a lawsuit charging them with assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress after what the plaintiff says was a prank played on him while he was anesthetized for surgery. An appeals court recently ruled that the defendants should stand trial.
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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which is the single largest payer for healthcare in the United States, is creating a hospital inspection program focused specifically on infection control.
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Have your staff members' shellac nails raised questions about whether they are artificial and an infection control threat?
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After a talk I gave last month, someone came up to me after the meeting and asked me this question, "After all the years you have been doing this [surgical consulting], what are some of the things you have learned?"
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In this study of a large administrative database, the incidence of selected complications in patients diagnosed with sleep apnea (SA) was compared to that in patients undergoing similar surgical procedures who were not diagnosed with SA.
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Seemingly, no one is happy with his or her block schedule at the hospital or the surgery center. After spending too much time on this issue with our own centers and hearing about others concerns, it is, quite honestly, irritating that such a simple process can be such a conundrum for most everyone.
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A $3.3 million verdict against a surgeon who apologized to his patient's family for her death is leading some outpatient surgery professionals to wonder if the push for apologies and transparency has a dark side. Are managers encouraging physicians to say something that actually will work against them in court?