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The holiday season inspires good cheer, introspection, and a spate of New Year's resolutions, but perhaps more than any of these it inspires gift-giving. With that in mind, we asked several outpatient surgery facility managers to help us create a holiday wish-list for the workplace, by telling us which products have helped them save time, get organized, and please their patients. Here are their recommendations, along with a few wishes.
*The ReliefBand
Once upon a time, a compact, drug-free, noninvasive device to treat post-operative nausea might have been relegated to Star Trek's sick bay. No more. Beth LaBouyer, the perioperative manager at Feather River Surgery Center in Yuba City, Calif., is one who has seen science-fiction and reality come together in the ReliefBand, made by Woodside Biomedical, Inc. "The best thing about it is that patients control it, taking it home with them," Ms. LaBouyer says. Worn like a watch on the underside of the wrist, the device uses mild electrical signals to stimulate nerves in the wrist. The resulting nerve impulses are said to interfere with nausea messages traveling from the stomach to the brain.
The band comes in two disposable versions, which provide 48 and 144 hours of nausea relief, respectively. A replaceable-battery model is intended mainly for those who travel frequently or experience motion sickness. In addition to being available to treat nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy and morning sickness, the device is available for post-op nausea as an adjunct to anti-emetics or on its own.
Ms. LaBouyer has been impressed with the effectiveness of the ReliefBand; a current study at her center has shown an effectiveness rate as high as 90 percent or better. Once the study is complete, she'll be able to tell if the band has led to a drop in anti-emetic use at Feather River. Even if it's added to overall costs, she says that they'll almost certainly continue to use it. "Patient satisfaction is high," she says.
*Autoclavable laparoscopic/arthroscopic camera
Mary Louise Dietrich, director of CHS Ambulatory Surgery Center of Bethlehem, Pa., recommends that administrators put Linvatec's steam-sterilizable laparoscopic/arthroscopic camera on their lists. "Most cameras on the market aren't steam-sterilizable, and a lot of managers don't know about this," she says.
*The FlashPak
Ms. Dietrich recommends that Riley's rigid-container system, which combines the rapidity of flash sterilization with the storage benefit afforded by standard devices used for steam- sterilization, be used with the Linvatec camera for quick turn-arounds. "There are no delays," she says, explaining that with traditional camera processing????-???????-???for example, that using paracetic acid????-???????-???it takes more time to wait for the camera to be sterilized than it does to do a procedure. "Doctors are doing arthroscopic procedures in 20 minutes now," she points out. The FlashPak and Linvatec camera taken together allow a sterilization of approximately 12 minutes, as opposed to 30 minutes, according to Ms. Dietrich. The closed sterilization system means that you get to follow industry sterilization protocol and turn cameras around quickly. The FlashPak works like this: You place an instrument in the rigid container and then place the container in the autoclave. Once the pressure begins to rise inside the sterilizer, valves in the top and bottom of the container open, allowing steam to pour into the top valve and cold air to exit out the bottom. Once the sterilization cycle is over and the pressure drops, the valves close????-???????-???so steam thoroughly sterilizes all the instruments within, and the container automatically closes and seals prior to your opening the sterilizer. You can store the instruments in the container for up to 24 hours.
*Palm Pilot
A portable datebook may be a godsend for any busy manager trying to keep track of numerous appointments and to-do's. That's why Steve Blom, a new administrator at the Surgery and Pain Center in San Antonio, Texas, puts the Palm Pilot at the top of his wish-list. The Palm Pilot, already popular with the corporate set, offers a to-do list, address and date "books," memo capabilities and an expense page. It gets loaded onto your computer, where you save your information and recharge daily. You control all the functions with a pointer, with which you can even swap information with other users.
*Practice-management software
If you run an ambulatory surgery center and have not yet gotten around to looking at an integrated management-software package, several individuals recommend you treat yourself to one this holiday season.
Cynthia Clark, of the SurgiCenter of Kansas City, for one, can't say enough about integrated practice-management software. Such a system, she says, is "great for inventory management, scheduling of surgeries, and looking at costs and spending." She uses HealthIS's AdvantX 2.1 for Ambulatory Surgery Centers, which offers more than 100 reports linked to various modules such as "Registration" and "Scheduling." "Scheduling" allows you to maintain an audit trail of appointment changes, sort scheduled cases by patient age, procedure, or surgeon, and create surgeon preference cards that automatically deplete supplies from inventory and allow you to monitor patient costs. Camberley Systems and SIS also make software programs for ambulatory surgery centers; for more on these, please see our August issue, or visit www.outpatientsurgery.net.
*TV and VCR in the recovery room
Darlene Johnson, administrator at the multispecialty Cleveland Surgery Center in Cleveland, Tenn., put a TV and VCR in her recovery area just under two months ago. It was an inexpensive, simple idea, but it's gotten a great response. She uses the setup to show patient-education videos, but says it's particularly helpful in keeping children calm and engaged when they're recovering. Ms. Johnson's center does lots of ENT surgeries on kids, which often require longer recovery periods. Fun, educational programs or the latest Disney feature can be played. "What a wonderful way to pass the time with a child," she says.
*Voice-activated
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Pamela Ertel, facility administrator at HealthSouth Surgery Center in Reading, Pa., says that a "voice-activated typing system" is what many managers are talking about getting these days. Dan Greene, an administrator at Mt. Pleasant Surgery Center in Pa., has benefited from such a system. Mr. Greene first used Dragon NaturallySpeaking, made by L&H, to transcribe notes and letters when he worked as an occupational therapist. The system enabled him to input text and have his hands free for other tasks, he says.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which works with headphones and the use of auditory prompts, may help you create documents three times faster than manual typing. The company estimates that a person speaking to the system at a conversational pace can dictate 140????-???160 net words per minute, producing a three-page, 900-word document in less than 6.5 minutes, compared with the 18 minutes it takes to produce the same document at 50 net words per minute. There are several programs with a variety of features, depending on the computer programs you're using: NaturallySpeaking Essentials, a basic program designed to introduce users to speech-recognition software, and which lets you e-mail, surf the Web, and visit chat rooms by voice; NaturallySpeaking Standard, designed for simple processing tasks such as letters and e-mails; NaturallySpeaking Preferred, which is designed especially for business use; and NaturallySpeaking Preferred USB, designed for laptop users.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred v.5 allows you to program dictation shortcuts, customize vocabulary with words you use often, and hear text read aloud for proofing. According to the company, with v.5, the program can now learn to recognize your voice in under five minutes.
Voice recognition systems do take some getting used to, says Mr. Greene. "You don't just plug it in and go," he stresses. "You must go through the tutorial and get accustomed to the system. The more you use it, the more it recognizes you. The best thing about it is it learns. As you correct it, it corrects itself for future reference."
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