(PENTA) were growing increasingly annoyed (PENTA-up frustra-
tion!).
As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. Our surgeons
jumped at the chance to show that that a smartly built facility can
improve patient care and broke ground on the 9,849-square-foot, 2-
room Piedmont Outpatient Surgery Center. Since performing our first
case in February 2012, 3,000 patients have come through the facility's
ORs each year. Our current success can be traced back to before the
center's doors opened, when we focused on designing and outfitting a
facility that would set us up for future growth and innovation.
Equipment planning
We began the planning process with a construction budget of $4.1 mil-
lion, with around $1 million earmarked for equipment. Because the
construction process is so time-consuming, there's a tendency to jump
in before you've accounted for each and every cost consideration that
could crop up. That's a mistake. Double- and triple-check every aspect
of your budgeting and add some padding to account for inevitable and
unforeseen oversights — the medical gas line that needs to be rerout-
ed mid-project or the electrical wiring issue that needs to be sorted
out — before moving forward.
Equipment purchasing is where you have the most wiggle room —
and where a clinical perspective is paramount. In the early stages of
our construction, an administrator with no clinical experience listed
the wrong-sized sterilizers on the budget. The estimate was off by
thousands: $6,000 compared to the $30,000 that we actually needed to
spend.
To outfit for an ENT, you'll need to invest in surgical microscopes.
Depending on your needs and the complexity of your cases, the price
could vary greatly — from $25,000 to $40,000 for basic microscopes
4 6 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • M A R C H 2 0 1 9
