ASC Industry News

Check out these articles for some of the latest hot topics in ASC Industry News:

How ASCs Can Mitigate Compliance Problem Areas

The healthcare regulatory landscape is becoming increasingly crowded, and dozens of agencies now oversee various aspects of an ASC’s operations, resulting in an abundance of rules. Staying on top of regulations is important to ensure patient safety, information security as well as financial success.

Source: Becker’s ASC

Ideas That Work: Emergency Preparedness

We added a spark to our emergency operations plan this year by letting staff play the roles of patient evacuees during our quarterly fire evacuation drills, which involve more than 150 members of our perioperative team. We had been using mannequins in our drills, but everyone was more engaged when we swapped them out for staff. That’s important when you’re trying to teach so many their role in evacuating an anesthetized patient during a fire, especially when you have as many ORs as we do: 26 in our Level 1 adult trauma center, 7 in our pediatric trauma center and 3 smaller ORs in our south wing.

Source: Outpatient Surgery

President Trump Signs Opioid Bill Into Law; 21 Companies Pledge Support

President Donald Trump signed the SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act Oct. 24 to increase the country’s opioid epidemic response efforts.

The bill focuses on improving access to treatment services by removing patient restrictions on Medicaid and Medicare, according to NPR. The bill also addresses health systems overprescribing opioids and allows government authorities to research nonaddictive drugs for patient pain management. In addition, the bill establishes measures to check for foreign shipments of illicit drugs to the U.S.

Source: Becker’s Hospital Review

ASCA CEO Discusses Leapfrog Outpatient Reporting Program

The Leapfrog Group is a national nonprofit organization that has been collecting and reporting data about the quality and safety of inpatient hospital care for 20 years. Recently, Leapfrog announced plans to expand into the outpatient setting and begin collecting comparable data from ASCs and hospital outpatient departments (HOPDs).

Source: ASCA