An occasional column on accreditation expectations. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on January 14, 2011, issued a Survey and Certification Memorandum revising the interpretive guidelines for anesthesia services. The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) has been announcing the success of its dialog with CMS and has identified…

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Freestanding centers are complying with most major recommendations for reprocessing gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopes. But a few areas still need attention, a new report indicates. The report, by the AAAHC Institute, a subsidiary of the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care, compiles quality and efficiency data on colonoscopy from 69 ambulatory…

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Day-of-surgery cancellations decreased dramatically from 8% in 2008 to fewer than 3% in 2010 after a performance improvement (PI) project on preoperative communication at the Stony Brook University Medical Center Ambulatory Surgery Center, Stony Brook, New York. "The number of cases performed has increased, along with revenue. Patient safety and…

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The dawn of hospital pay for quality has arrived. Hospitals have been reporting Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP) measures and other quality measures to Medicare for public display. Now starting in fiscal year 2013, how well they perform on 7 of the SCIP measures and 18 other measures will determine…

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Perceptions of turnover times by surgeons and anesthesiologists may be influenced more by a mental model of how team activity influences turnover times than by actual turnover times per se, a new study finds. Researchers from the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate, Syracuse, and the University of Iowa,…

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How do we charge for invasive procedures performed at the bedside? What's the correct way to bill for patients who stay in the recovery room because of a lack of beds in the ICU? In this column, Keith Siddel, MBA, an expert on health care business operations, responds to questions…

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Wanted: Operating Room Scheduler. Salary $33,000. Operating room schedulers reserve space for each surgical procedure in a hospital or ambulatory surgery facility. They determine how long a procedure will take and what staff is necessary. OR schedulers work with anesthesiologists to assign one for each procedure, as well as OR…

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There are many reasons you may want to change how you organize or package an instrument set or the sterilization cycle for a set. Maybe the set weighs more than the 25 pounds recommended for containerized instrument sets. Perhaps the original container has sharp edges that tear the wrappers, and…

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