verification or on its own, ultrasound technology has become a driv-
er of nerve blocks' benefits, experts say. "To be successful, a region-
al anesthesia program must demonstrate improvement in effective-
ness, patient pain scores, safety and efficiency," says Dr. Friedman.
"These can be achieved in large part due to advances in ultrasound-
guided regional anesthesia techniques."
Just be sure you have enough of the devices on hand to serve all
your providers during all the cases that demand regional. Don't let a
tight equipment budget bottleneck the workflow by making "all of
anesthesia share one ultrasound machine," which more than one facil-
ity named as an obstacle to an effective regional program. OSM
E-mail dbernard@outpatientsurgery.net.
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