In a world where frontline healthcare workers are being challenged more than ever before, it can be tough to convince your nurses and techs to step up and fill leadership roles in the OR and throughout your outpatient surgery facility....

For the past decade, I’ve written my column on resolutions I planned to make in the New Year, the many well-intentioned goals I can never seem to keep. But this year I thought I’d try something different....

My hospital’s sterile processing department is responsible for turning around 1,500 instrument trays a day, and we take every measure possible to ensure...

Building a $50 million new construction project without a major health system as a partner is no easy trick, but that’s just what two western Wisconsin practices did....

When the clock struck midnight in 2000 and I convinced myself that Y2K wouldn’t actually cripple the very fabric of our society, I promised myself I’d dunk a basketball on a regulation hoop by year’s end....

Packed OR schedules and staffing shortages conspired to cancel Kadlec Regional Medical Center’s annual skills fair, which was scheduled to take place in its simulation lab near its main campus in Richland, Wash...

When patients are recovering from intense surgeries at home and something unexpected or concerning occurs, they need to know whether what they’re experiencing is a common-but-alarming natural byproduct of their surgical journey...

After much work, communication and trial and error, the staff at Eye 35 ASC in Schertz, Texas, have fine-tuned and standardized their surgical packs to match their exact needs....

When OrthoArizona recently decided to hold a food drive, it pulled out all the stops. Rather than limiting the effort to one facility helping a single community, it placed donation boxes at each of its more than two dozen locations in...

How do you get kids comfortable with the idea of going under the knife? You give them a glimpse into the operating room, making sure there are plenty of teddy bears to go around....

Up until a few years ago, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center didn’t have a standard surgical smoke evacuation program in place. While having such a program may seem like a no-brainer for one of the nation’s leading cancer centers...

Juan A. Sanchez, MD, FACS, describes the OR as a “target-rich environment for sharps injuries.” Dr. Sanchez is the chair of the committee on Perioperative Care at the American College of Surgeons, and he says a perfect storm of factors in...

The relationship between opioid use during and after surgery and the opioid addiction crisis is a complex one. While ineffective pain management can make recovery a nightmare, there’s a real risk for many patients when it comes to opioid addiction....

With the surge in joint replacements and other orthopedic surgeries moving to ambulatory care, ASCs also face a higher risk for surgical site infections (SSIs)....

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...

Joint replacement surgery has long been a life-changing procedure for patients with debilitating arthritis, but it’s not perfect. Surgeons often see a small percentage of patients whose pain lingers postoperatively, despite implants that seem...

With reimbursements dropping and construction costs on the rise, successfully building a new ASC from the ground up requires a Herculean effort from a diverse group of experts....

The $1.7 trillion federal spending package passed by the lame-duck Congress last month includes a 2% reduction in physicians’ pay for Medicare cases, which experts in the same-day surgical industry say will have multiple immediate negative...

Long before I was a tireless travel nurse and an acid-tongued humor columnist, I was a young brat taking in a crazy world and making memories that would serve as fodder for countless columns and yarns in the years that followed....

A mere four procedures were added to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) ASC-approved list for 2023, a decision met with disappointment and frustration by advocates for ambulatory surgery centers across the U.S....