Outpatient Surgery Magazine - Subscribers

Backbreaker - Outpatient Surgery Magazine - April 2019

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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As you know, you need to administer most prophylactic IV antibiotics within 60 minutes of the start of surgery. When the sur- gery starts outside that window, Medicare requires that you report it. Yet for many facilities, this time frame is chal- lenging due to long- running cases, or prepping or positioning delays. "Our director of nursing started tossing around ideas with the sur- veyor about how we might fix the timing issues, and that open conver- sation led directly to a fix," says Alfonso del Granado, the compliance officer at Ashton Center for Day Surgery. The fix? Waiting until the patient is wheeled into the OR to start the IV. "We just hang the IV bag over the bed, attach it to the line so the patient is already getting the drip even though the IV isn't started and then, as soon as you wheel the patient in, that's when you start it," says Mr. del Granado. Even when a case is late to start, the ASC still falls well within the 60-minute window. And you can't argue with the results they've seen. "We've had 100% compliance since we started this," says Mr. del Granado. 4. Generating good ideas Have you checked your generator lately? The Saddle River Valley 6 2 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • A P R I L 2 0 1 9 • PERFECT TIMING Starting the IV antibiotic right as the patient is wheeled into the OR — as opposed to in pre-op — is a proven way to stay within the 60-minute window before surgery. Alfonso del Granado

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