Need to order supplies, schedule your staff, check your patients' health histories, update your surgeons' preference cards, earn your CE credits? There's an app for that, as well as for many other facets of running a surgical facility you might not know about.

Take a quick look at your smart phone's home screen. How many surgical apps are sharing space with your social media and shopping apps? If you see Facebook and Amazon icons, but none for apps that could make your facility more efficient, here's a look at 7 useful apps you might want to download. They could eliminate time-consuming manual processes so you can focus on providing great service to your patients and physicians. And, who knows, they could supplant Netflix as your new favorite app.

HealthLoop

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Engage patients before and after admission through automated, daily check-ins with HealthLoop, a free app that lets patients communicate effectively with the physician's office.

"It connects the patient with the surgeon's office for questions, early reporting of problems, pre-op entry of patient function scores and post-op entry of function by patient," says Gabrielle White, RN, CASC, executive director of the Hoag Orthopedic Institute Surgery Center in Newport Beach, Calif. "It collates the data and sends reports to the surgeons."

ASRA Coags

asra.com/page/150/asra-apps
Is it safe to perform a neuraxial procedure on that patient? This app gives your anesthesia providers instant access to the latest American Society for Regional Anesthesia (ASRA) Anticoagulation Guidelines for neuraxial intervention so they can make quick, evidence-based decisions.

"Given the array of old and new anticoagulants, having this information at your fingertips is awesome for patient safety and conversations with your surgeons," says anesthesiologist Eugene Viscusi, MD, the director of acute pain management at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, Pa. $3.99 on iTunes or Google Play.

MySurgeon

mysurgeon.net
Want to stay on top of your surgeon's preferences? MySurgeon lets you create, edit, save, update and share your surgeon's contact information, preferences and procedures and more, from equipment needs to gloves and gown sizes. You can also snap up to 5 photos of the back table and Mayo stand to share or save for future reference. We've come a long way from having a surgeon's preferences listed on 3 x 5 index cards. $24.99 per year.

GroupMe

groupme.com
GroupMe, a free group text messaging app, lets you set up a "private chat room" of all your staff and physicians so that you can send group texts to coordinate with coworkers.

"It has come in handy in communicating to the facility and is much more effective than individual texts, calls and emails," says Leslie Mattson RN, BSHM, LNC, president of ALM Surgical Solutions in Atlanta, Ga. "In an emergency, you can notify everyone all at once to communicate center closings or delays and make sure no one is missed. I even used it to let everyone know that we had a state surveyor in the facility, so everyone could be prepared."

CamScanner

camscanner.com
The CamScanner app turns your mobile device into a portable scanner. You can snap a photo of paper documents and email them as a PDF file, says Ms. Mattson. CamScanner will automatically crop and enhance the image, making text easily readable. Ms. Mattson recently used the app to send a copy of a letter she needed to complete an accreditation application.

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My AORN Guidelines

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When Emily McKisson MS, BSN, RN, CNOR, the nurse educator at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio, has a question about sterility, prepping or positioning best practices, she references My AORN Guidelines, a free app that lets you analyze, monitor and sustain compliance with AORN's evidence-based Guidelines for Perioperative Practice.

Sterile Education

sterileeducationmobile.com
Sterile Education is the first mobile app designed for sterile processing professionals. It has a dedicated news feed specifically for sterile processing CE webinars. It also includes social media features and a calendar of events.