Drug Supply Legislation

The President signed into law the reauthorization of the prescription drug user free act which takes effect October 1, 2012. The law contains language requiring manufacturers of certain drugs to report to the secretary of the U.S. Department…

Monitoring Patients CO2 Levels

The American Society of Anesthesiologist released an amendment to the Standards for Basic Anesthetic Monitoring that became effective July 1, 2011. Section 3.2.4 of the standard refers to the requirements for monitoring during moderate sedation…

The latest on MRSA

MRSA has recently been added to the list of diseases transferred using unsafe injection practices. There have been 2 recent breakouts in Arizona and Delaware where the use of medication from single dose/single-use vials for multiple patients…

Governing Body and CMS

Failure to meet governing body responsibilities as defined by CMS is one of the top ASC deficiencies reported by Medicare surveyors. Board members are under mounting pressure to get closely involved in ASC operations. Medicare has mandated that…

Are You Hitting these Key Benchmarks??

Days in AR: 33-35 Current AR: 50% or less Supply Costs: 19%-20% Staffing Costs: 20%-22% Man Hours per case: 6-8 Eye/GI/Pain 3-5 Room Turnover Time: 7-10 minutes    Eye: 6-35 median 13    GI: 8-37 min. Median 17    Ortho: 17-74 minutes…

Well Established PONV Risk Factors

Female gender after puberty Childhood after infancy and before young adulthood Non-smoking status History PONV or motion sickness Increased duration of surgical procedures. Each 30 minute increase in surgery time increases baseline PONV…

4 Benchmarks ASC's Frequently Overlook

Accounts receivable aging. Accounts receivable aging can usually be tracked using the ASC’s billing system. This should be benchmarked internally from quarter to quarter and externally with other national standards. Staff hours per case.…

Are Your Anesthesia Providers an Infection Risk?

A separation in sterility: It would be unimaginable to use surgical instruments on a patient without sterilizing and processing the instruments to ensure sterility. But when you look at the tools an anesthesiologist use there is little to no…

Evidenced Based Effective Nursing Leadership

Be an authentic leader: An authentic leader is genuine, trustworthy, reliable and believable. Remaining true to ones core values, identities, preferences and emotions is key to an authentic leader. Authentic leaders develop heart and compassion…

Endoscope Reprocessing: Things to Know

Initial and annual competencies should be completed on all staff and before they even clean or reprocess a scope. Also, random observation is important in that it helps to reinforce the consistency of how the scopes are reprocessed. The RN in…