When leaders at Memorial Healthcare, a 154-bed community hospital in Owosso, Michigan, wanted to get a jump on preparing for bundled payments, they chose to focus on total hip and knee surgery. Creating a perioperative surgical home (PSH) for this patient population paid off in enhanced patient satisfaction and reductions…

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Editor's Note The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) has published new “Practice guidelines for preoperative fasting and the use of pharmacologic agents to reduce the risk of pulmonary aspiration: Application to health patients undergoing elective procedures.” The document updates its guidelines published in 2011. The guidelines are intended for use…

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Editor's Note Introduction of the Perioperative Surgical Home (PSH) model for patients having ambulatory laparoscopic cholecystectomy at a Kaiser Permanente facility was associated with decreased length of stay and unplanned hospital admissions in this study. A total of 878 patients were included in the preimplementation period, and 1,082 in the…

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Editor's Note No significant association was found between anesthesia service use and colonoscopy screening or colorectal cancer screening rates, suggesting that more evidence is needed to support the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services rule change that defined “screening colonoscopy” to include separately furnished anesthesia services, this study finds.           The…

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Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on December 27 issued a warning to healthcare facilities of potential safety risks associated with battery-powered mobile medical carts. The FDA has received reports of explosions, fires, smoking, and overheating of the lithium and lead acid batteries in these carts that required…

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Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on December 14 issued a new warning saying that repeated or lengthy use of general anesthetics and sedation drugs during surgical procedures in children younger than 3 years or pregnant women during the third trimester may affect the development of children’s brains.…

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Editor's Note The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) on December 13 issued a final rule allowing full practice authority for certain advanced practice registered nurses working in VA facilities, including certified nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, and certified nurse midwives. The rule excludes certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs), following lobbying…

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Editor's Note Nonoperating room anesthesia (NORA) is a growing component of anesthesiology practice, this study finds. The proportion of NORA cases overall increased from 28.3% in 2010 to 35.9% in 2014, and the mean age of NORA patients increased significantly faster than OR patients. Compared with OR cases, more NORA…

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Editor's Note Assigning certain anesthesiologists to specific surgeons affected team performance and turnaround time in this study. Researchers assessed the relationship between turnaround times and assignment of anesthesiologists to surgeons using a Monte Carlo simulation. They constructed managerial decision tables for the assignments, and defined a decision algorithm based on…

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Editor's Note The Surgical Apgar Score (SAS) was found to be significantly predictive but weakly discriminative for major complications and death after emergency high-risk abdominal surgery in this study. The risk of major complications, death, and ICU admission increased significantly with decreasing SAS (P < .001). The score’s c-statistics were…

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