Essential Elements of a Highly Efficient Fluid Waste System
Waste management is a crucial part of any high-volume GI practice. Your staff deserves a system that is safe, efficient, portable and one-hundred percent...
Flexible Endoscope Storage Solutions
Infection prevention and sterile processing pros who visit GI centers continue to see the use of inadequate endoscope storage methods that can foster contamination...
Guest Editor: Pushing the Boundaries
As healthcare providers, we continuously push the boundaries of what we can safely do on an outpatient basis....
July 5, 2023
How do well-meaning sterile processing professionals make sense of and track the myriad complex steps in a typical endoscope manufacturer’s IFUs?
Technologies That Improve Adenoma Detection Rates
Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer diagnosed in both men and women in the United States....
June 21, 2023
When Ohio Gastroenterology Group, a Columbus-based physician-owned practice with five endoscopy centers, was drowning in tens of thousands of monthly phone calls...
June 7, 2023
When Ryan Reynolds, star of the popular Deadpool movies and perennial rom-com leading man, agreed to have his first colonoscopy filmed for public release...
The Profit Right Under Your Nose
Ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) are an odd beast. They are an enigma to the novice operator, often resulting in failure on multitudinous fronts....
Ideas That Work: Avoid the Endoscope Tipping Point
Even when endoscopy staff are well-taught and well-trained, accidents happen in what can be fast-paced, high-volume environments at GI centers....
Standardization in the Outpatient GI Center
There’s nothing easy about cleaning flexible endoscopes. They’re fragile and expensive and one can argue the margin for reprocessing them safely is...
Infection Prevention: Making Sense of Complex IFUs
Virtually every article, webinar or how-to guide on flexible endoscope reprocessing includes some version of this advice: Be sure to follow the manufacturer’s Instructions For Use (IFU)....
Maintenance and Repair Strategies for Endoscopes
With endoscope repair, cost isn’t the only consideration. Providers require consistent, high-quality availability and prompt turnarounds to avoid risks to performance and throughput....
Running a High-Volume GI Center
If you’re on the fence about entering the outpatient GI space, a few statistics on colonoscopy cases should be all the convincing you need....
Tapping the Potential of Engagement Tech
Like many high-volume ASCs emerging from the pandemic’s depths, Ohio Gastroenterology Group had a phone call problem … as in, way more than its staff and physicians could handle....
Keep Up With the Colonoscopy Boom
Combine the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recently lowering the recommended initial colorectal screening age from 50 to 45 with the influx of newly scheduled screenings from patients who postponed their colonoscopies during the height...
Thinking of Buying: Endoscope Storage Cabinets
Ensuring that reprocessed endoscopes are completely dry during storage remains an important patient safety topic in the world of endoscopy. Residual moisture in and around endoscopes promotes the growth...
The Latest on Flexible Endoscope Care
In March, the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) updated ANSI/AAMI ST91:2021, its standard for the cleaning and storing of flexible endoscopes. The new guidance document — which addresses...
August 11, 2022
Colonoscopy is the gold standard for colorectal cancer screening and surveillance, but folds and blind spots within the colon can harbor precancerous polyps that may be...
New Standards in Endoscope Reprocessing
Best practices in the high-level disinfection of flexible endoscopes must be prioritized after every one of the estimated 15 million colonoscopies performed each year in the U.S.,...
Rigid Protocols for Flexible Endoscope Reprocessing
There are between 75 and 100 intricate steps involved in the proper reprocessing of flexible endoscopes. That means there are countless opportunities for staff to miss critical steps...