CHECK IT OUT 99.75% of ASCs use safety checklists, says CMS.

The use of pre-surgical safety checklists is nearly universal among ambulatory surgical centers, according to the results of Medicare's national quality data reporting program, and about three-fourths of facilities say their staffs are fully vaccinated against influenza.

While Medicare-certified ASCs reported a slight uptick in patient burn incidents between 2013 and 2014, the rates of patient falls, wrong surgeries and hospital transfers saw slight declines, and pre-op antibiotic administration rates remained about the same, with about 96% of facilities reporting them delivered on time every time.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released the data collected by its Ambulatory Surgery Center Quality Reporting Program on Wednesday, broken out into national, state-by-state and individual facility results.

While the first 5 quality codes — which tabulate patient burns (ASC-1), patient falls (ASC-2), wrong-site, -side, -patient, -procedure and -implant surgeries (ASC-3), hospital transfers and admissions for all causes (ASC-4) and the on-time delivery of IV antibiotics before surgery (ASC-5) — were available for calendar years 2013 and 2014, the other 5 only began to be collected for 2014.

Those codes included surgical safety checklist use (ASC-6), volume data for selected procedures (ASC-7), influenza vaccine coverage (ASC-8), and 2 measures gauging intervals between colonoscopies for patients at different risk levels (ASC-9 and -10).

David Bernard