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Features
The Physician Pay Cut Fallout
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...
What Does It Take to Launch a New ASC?
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....
Capitalize on Joint Replacement Innovations
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...
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...
Standardize Nasal Decolonization and Cut SSIs
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)....
Momentum Growing for Opioid-Free Surgery
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....
Cut Down Stubbornly High Sharps Injury Rates
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 Secrets of a Successful Surgical Smoke Evacuation Program
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...
Ideas That Work
Ideas That Work: Help Children Prepare for Surgery
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....
Ideas That Work: ‘Donation Bins’ Help Multiple Communities
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...
Ideas That Work: Saving the Environment One Surgical Pack at a Time
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....
Ideas That Work: Stoplight Simplifies Post-Care Decisions
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...
Ideas That Work: Unlocking Team Education
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...
Departments
Editor’s Page: Keeping It Simple
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....
Business Advisor: Beyond the ‘Box of Doctors’ Model
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....
Infection Control: How Clean Is Your Water?
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...
Behind Closed Doors: What Went Wrong?
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....