Outpatient Surgery Magazine - Subscribers

Focused Factories - November 2015 - 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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1 3 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 5 | O U T P A T I E N TS U R G E R Y. N E T It's not disclosed publicly. There are patient privacy issues, after all. Also, errors happen to individual patients, not groups of patients — unless actions by a provider affect a group of patients, like the Las Vegas GI doc who reused propofol vials. As Joseph Stalin put it, "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic." That's why Dr. Rothfield used the story of Ms. Rivers to drive home the peg he would hang his talk on. "It changes the nature of the discus- sion when you talk about 1 person," says Dr. Rothfield, system vice presi- dent and chief medical officer at St. Vincent's Healthcare in Jacksonville, Fla. "My talk was 15 minutes of Joan Rivers and 45 minutes of patient safety. I'm still committed to the idea that we can do better." Nobody likes the spotlight or the finger pointed at them, but the death of Ms. Rivers has drawn attention to the safety of outpatient surgery. Granted, publicity about preventable medical errors would hurt the healthcare industry in the short term. But in the long term, it could help us tremendously. "Hopefully, the positive from this scrutiny will be a re-evaluation of policies and practices, and safety culture at surgical centers that result in improvements to patient safety," says Dr. Rothfield. It's said that a death is meaningful if it imparts lessons others can learn from. Dr. Rothfield highlighted 3 lessons that can improve safety at your facility. Kenneth Rothfield, MD, MBA, CPE Pamela Bevelhymer, RN, BSN

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