The OR generates more than 40% of a hospital's revenue and between 20% and 30% of its total waste volume, according to Practice Greenhealth, a nonprofit organization dedicated to environmental sustainability in health care. Given those numbers, it's no wonder that being environmentally friendly or "green" doesn't just benefit society—it…

Read More

The government laid out a roadmap for moving toward value-based purchasing (VBP) for ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) in an April 2011 report to Congress. The Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary was required to develop a plan under the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010. The government sees VBP as…

Read More

Tracking surgical site infections (SSI) is not easy for ambulatory surgical centers (ASC). Most patients are gone soon after waking up, but infections may not occur for days, weeks, or, in the case of implants, up to a year or more. Yet tighter infection reporting rules (along with other quality…

Read More

A patient with a multidrug-resistant infection is coming to your OR. That patient will travel from her room—one of the most contaminated areas of the hospital—to surgery, which is perhaps the cleanest. How can her caregivers avoid cross-contamination that could transmit the infection to others? At 219-bed St Patrick Hospital…

Read More

OR managers have many opportunities to improve the lives of their patients. They meet with staff to review scheduling policies and infection prevention procedures. They may sit on committees to help select new supplies and equipment. The physical work environment, however, is usually a given. The operating room may have…

Read More

Medtronic caused a stir in February 2011 when it canceled several contracts with the 2 largest group purchasing organizations (GPOs), Novation and Premier. The big device company ended 5 Novation contracts worth $2 billion covering spinal implants, neurosurgery power tools, bone graft materials, and cardiac rhythm management products plus a…

Read More

Imaging has a long history in the operating room. In the 1960s, x-ray units were mounted on the ceiling, as they might be today. But the surgeon had to go to an adjacent room to view the image, and images could only be stored for 10 minutes. Mobile C-arms, introduced…

Read More

"Building hybrid rooms is building for the future," says Nicholas D. Troeleman, RNFA, director of perioperative services at the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC), Baltimore. "Having hybrid rooms in a research setting like the University of Maryland gives physician researchers the ability to develop new techniques and build on…

Read More