autoclaves. Now, when the trays come out of the autoclave, they can
be put on the racks to cool down. If necessary, they can be stored
there overnight or between cases.
A final important touch for sterile processing was the installation of a
reverse-osmosis water-treatment system. The reason: At our old facility,
we frequently had to replace the heating elements in our autoclaves,
because the public water we were using contained minerals that would
get caked onto the elements. With the new system, we're delivering
deionized distilled water to the autoclaves. And in 2 years we haven't
had to replace a single element. Yes, there's an upfront cost for the
reverse-osmosis equipment, but in the long run, we expect it to pay off.
And there's an additional benefit. Initially, we were buying hundreds
of gallons of distilled water to rinse off our instruments. That was
expensive and created a storage challenge. Fortunately, about a year
after moving into the new building, we discovered we could also pipe
the reverse-osmosis water into our decontamination sinks. Now, every
sink we use for rinsing purposes runs deionized distilled water. It was a
secondary engineering thought, but I'm glad we included it in our build.
Foundation for success
We want surgeons to enjoy bringing revenue-generating procedures to
our ORs. They continue to be attracted to our facility, which we
believe is the preeminent eye surgery center in our area and one that's
superbly equipped and expertly staffed. We've been able to add cases
to fill the additional square footage and have settled into the new
space, which should serve us well for at least the next 20 years.
OSM
M A R C H 2 0 1 9 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y. N E T • 3 3
Mr. Nelson (rnelson@islandeye.net) is the executive director of Island Eye
Surgicenter in Westbury, N.Y.
