There were boxes of suture hiding everywhere at AdventHealth Surgery Center Lenexa (Kan.), some opened and some outdated, some stored on the big suture cart...

Two words that strike fear in the heart of every OR manager: open time. That, of course, is when your ORs sit silent and empty while it's standing-room only in the staff...

Before critical procedures like our high-volume thyroidectomies, we gather a multidisciplinary team to play a game of "What Could Go Wrong?" in which we discuss...

We've shaved some precious minutes off our turnover times by creating a "runner" position to help the RN, surgical tech and the 1 to 2 instrument techs we staff for each...

The winner of this year's OR Excellence Award for Patient Satisfaction goes to great lengths to get patients to fill out their post-op surveys and even greater lengths to...

The OR team at Lakeside Surgery Center in Omaha, Neb., works hard to manage patients’ post-op pain with an eye toward the addiction epidemic. “Our nation is in...

Lasers are powering numerous procedures at eye surgery centers — cataracts, glaucoma, astigmatism, cornea and retina among them — with more on the way....

The patient is prepped and draped, and I'm seated to begin my charting. Only then do I realize that I've forgotten to record the serial number of the SCD box. I'd have to hop...

We're thrilled to introduce this year's OR Excellence Award Winners, a group of surgical leaders who represent facilities excelling at performing safe, environmentally friendly...

Has your OR staff lost its way when it comes to pretreating instruments at the point of use before sending them out for reprocessing? Have they never even known the way?...

However wonderful it might (or might not) be for healthcare pricing to be transparent, what does it matter if you have no clear understanding of related costing and other...

From blue wrap to plastic film to white cardboard, ORs produce millions of mounds and millions of pounds of waste per year. Rather than cart it away to landfills,...

What's the best way to keep your sterilized instruments free of contaminants and protect them from damage during storage and transport? Most of our clients use...

We've all seen patients with post-op delirium. They're disoriented and confused immediately after surgery. They have trouble focusing and are unable to participate...

It costs the Graystone Eye Surgery Center in Hickory, N.C., $1.05 to warm a patient. A loaner linen service charges $1 to clean a blanket, and the cost of using the...

This interactive vending machine houses, tracks and dispenses Xenco Medical’s sterile-packaged spinal instruments and implants. The Wi-Fi-enabled machine uses an advanced...

What type of immune response does your surgical mesh elicit in patients? That's a question you and your surgeons should ask, says Stephen F. Badylak, DVM, MD,...

Your everyday focus is to improve patients’ lives through superior care while providing an experience that’s as pleasant and safe as possible. But what about engaging...

Besides the occasional complaint about incomplete sets or late-arriving trays, how can an OR manager grade the sterile processing department’s performance? We’ve got you...

First, a disclaimer on emerging alternative wound-closure devices: There is nothing superior to the traditional suture in terms of approximating wound edges. On this, plastic...