January 2021

Running a surgical facility during the pandemic requires wearing many hats while keeping several balls in the air and numerous plates spinning. Norma Bacon, administrator at the New England Surgery Center...

Same-day shoulder replacements are very much in their infancy, but the migration from inpatient hospitals to ambulatory ORs is moving fast. In fact, the rate at which shoulder replacements are increasing is higher than...

Adverse events involving wrong-site, wrong-side and wrong-patient errors are devastating outcomes for surgeons who must live with the mistakes and patients who suffer unnecessary physical scars. These never events persist ...

There are several ways to ensure your staff is properly trained to handle a malignant hyperthermia emergency. Making them sit through yet another annual in-service or having them read dry educational materials...

With opioid-sparing protocols firmly positioned as the standard for managing post-op pain, surgeons and anesthesiologists have become masters of multimodal analgesia, perfectly combining a little bit of this with...

When Stamford Health (Conn.) discovered a lack of standardization in its skin antisepsis protocols, the OR leaders at the facility knew they had act. After all, inconsistency is the enemy of an effective prepping process....

Getting back up and running and returning to a sense of normalcy are phrases that have been thrown around since COVID-19 hit. As elective procedures such as colonoscopies began to ramp back up after last year's nationwide...

We purchased four rolling desks that are used in our pre-op/PACU area. Staff like the adjustable surface, which lets them sit or stand while working. Each desk has plenty of storage space and a shelf where staff often keep...

Most patients are nervous before surgery, especially now when family members and loved ones are unable to wait with them due to COVID-19 restrictions. That's why we tap into the calming effects of aromatherapy. We hand out...

Last year was obviously challenging for our surgery center. The staff was physically and emotionally exhausted from working in one of COVID-19's first national hot spots, and sorely needed the annual holiday dinner...

Patients who undergo surgery on their birthdays definitely deserve special treatment, so we make a point to scan the case schedule every morning to check if a patient is celebrating a life milestone. If they are, we surprise them...

We send patients home with blue neck pillows made from memory foam for ergonomic support and personalized handwritten notes from their surgeons. Some patients have lengthy drives awaiting them after surgery,...

Patients were already a bit nervous when they would arrive for their endoscopies or colonoscopies, and we noticed that sitting in the waiting room watching the news would often stress them out more. We thought, why not get rid...

I remember my first paycheck. It was made on a now-vintage machine, the kind with a hand crank that imprinted the amount: Ten Dollars. That was my starting salary for a week-long summer gig as a kid at my grandfather's...

OMS's Outpatient Prospective Payment System and Ambulatory Surgical Center final rule, which took effect on Jan. 1, substantially blurs the lines between inpatient and outpatient surgical care, as well as...

CMS requires surgery centers to have infection preventionists on staff. Some facilities assign providers to the role simply to fulfil the requirement, but infection prevention has taken on a greater significance during...

With so many mobile C-arms available from numerous vendors who offer a wide variety of functionality and unique features, picking the right one for your facility can feel overwhelming. Start by collecting substantial feedback from...

Retained foreign objects were the most frequently reported adverse event between 2015 and 2017, according to The Joint Commission. We decided to tackle this issue head on by developing a custom count board...

Abulatory surgical facilities have pivoted quickly during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has shown clinical teams are able to make a number of changes in short order. In this new world of "must-dos," though, we can't lose...

Great Ideas for Your OR

I've never been so happy to watch the ball drop on New Year's Eve. As soon as it touched down and ended the year we want to forget, I looked forward and focused on setting some self-care goals....