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About 73% of employers conduct criminal background checks on all job candidates, according to a 2010 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, and another 19% of employers do so only for selected job candidates. They can be particularly important in healthcare when a job applicant must be trusted with vulnerable patients and data, but experts caution that background checks have limitations.
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If your facility is open as you read this, congratulations! There are a number of freestanding facilities that didn't make it through the past "dark years."
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According to The Joint Commission, retained surgical items resulting in death or permanent loss of function were the most frequently reported sentinel event in 2010 and 2011.
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Cyber attacks. Data thefts. System breaches. They're all on the rise, and healthcare is the no. 1 field at risk, according to a just-released Internet Security Threat Report 2011 Trends from Symantec Corp.1 Consider these recent examples from the outpatient surgery field:
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All manner of electronic devices are common in any healthcare setting, and individuals increasingly are likely to use their own smart phones, tablets, and other personal electronics while at work. The proliferation of electronics is leading some patient safety experts to worry that patient safety might be threatened by "distracted doctoring."
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Previously, some scheduled surgery patients at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, MI, failed to return phone calls because they had just spoken to someone.
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[Editor's note: This is the first part of a two-part series on issues surrounding social media and ambulatory surgery. In this issue, we give you some horror stories and tell you how to avoid them. We tell you how to be proactive about your online presence, as well as how to develop a social media policy. Next month, we discuss legal issues and employee training.]
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While it is difficult to surprise me anymore, I discovered that in 2011 we opened more not-for-profit, freestanding, off-site hospital surgery centers then we did actual for-profit surgery centers. In looking at our current workload and "pipeline" projects, it looks like the trend is going to extend into 2012.
