Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Special Edition: Surgical Construction - February 2020 - Subscribe to Outpatient Surgery Magazine

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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2. Planning for future growth Before our facility's rebuild, we had eight decontamination worksta- tions. Now we have 12, but only nine of those are currently being used. The other three are ready to go for when we add on more cases and require more instrument reprocessing manpower. In terms of storage, the last thing you want to do is say, "Well, we can probably squeeze in extra capacity here." If anything, regardless of how well you plan, you're going to have to get creative with finding additional storage. One way: Strategically placed sterilizers. For example, install a dou- ble-sided sterilizer right next to a storage area. That way the sterilizer can be loaded one end and, when the sterilization is complete, opened on the other end into the storage area for cool down. Also, use the design phase as an opportunity to see where you can pare down your instrumentation. With our increase in case volume, we anticipate reprocessing approximately 200,000 trays per year (up from a 144,000 before the rebuild). When I started working here, I did away with 288 trays that we simply weren't using to make room for more storage and more instrument racks. 3. Service for sterilizers Low-temp sterilizers and steam autoclaves, which both can run around $80,000, will be your biggest cash outlays. Cost is obviously key, but it's far from the only factor you should consider when getting vendor bids. Quality, additional offerings (does the vendor branch off into instrument repair?) and timely service are just as important as price when it comes to the equipment that's essentially the heart of your SPD. If your sterilizer goes offline and you put in a service call to your vendor, the peace of mind in knowing that the vendor will be there 3 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 • F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 0

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