Same-Day Surgery

Reprocessing and Cleaning Breaches Haunt Some ORs

Patients have sued a Colorado hospital over infections that occurred after surgery. The lawsuit follows public notification of an earlier infection breach in surgical instrument sterilization and cleaning.

Investigators Find Connections Between Surgical Tool Design, Reuse, and Contamination

After surgical instruments undergo multiple uses and processing cycles, they can become contaminated while sustaining structural damage and collecting biofilm. Researchers found that after using and decontaminating surgical instruments 20 times, neither a manual nor automated cleaning process removed all the patient secretions.

Possible Flaws When Reprocessing Single-Use Items

The FDA allows surgery centers to reprocess some single-use items, following a standardized process. But there are some changing market pressures that shed doubt on whether this efficiency is feasible. There also have been problems when surgery centers perform procedures incorrectly.

Streamlined Surgical Trays Can Lead to Time, Money Savings

A surgery center found that efforts to streamline endocrine surgical trays led to faster tray preparation time and saved $31.62 per operation in reprocessing costs. By streamlining trays for a more exact fit with each procedure, the hospital projected a $28,000 annual savings in instrument reprocessing.

Study Raises Questions About Reimbursement Metrics for DRG-Based Bundled Payments

Researchers examined reimbursement in bundled payment programs in spine surgery and found that providers are reimbursed the same amount for lumbar fusions regardless of several factors that could affect use and costs.

Medicare Surveyors Catch Same Mistakes, Now Issue Harsher Penalties

The types of citations have stayed the same, but the repercussions are more severe. CMS survey trends show the same pattern of mistakes caught by federal surveyors. In response, a new trend has emerged: harsher citations.

Cutting Corners in the ASC

What do you do when witnessing someone cutting corners? Speak up. The compromise in quality or safety often begins at the top. Once that top-down culture permeates a facility, it is only a matter of time before the entire program is infected and something disastrous happens.