HCPro.com: Ambulatory Quality and Compliance Insider

Whether you're complying with The Joint Commission's National Patient Safety Goals, meeting CMS requirements, or overcoming AAAHC survey challenges, maintaining highquality patient care is no small task. Every issue of Ambulatory Quality and Compliance Insider is packed with field-tested compliance tips you can implement right away and how-to advice from ambulatory experts across the country.

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May 2008 (Volume 8, Issue 5)	view entire issue

Unsafe practice may cause infected medication vials
A recent Hepatitis C outbreak involving a Nevada surgery center led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to warn health providers of the serious risk involved in unsafe injection practices. In March, the Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD) notified 40,000 patients of the Endoscopy Center of South- ern Nevada in Las Vegas that they may have been exposed to Hepatitis C, Hepatitis B, and HIV. According to the SNHD, the contamination was related to a syringe that was reused on the same patient during the administration of anesthesia medication.

Preserving evidence is essential for effective RCAs
A good root-cause analysis (RCA) is akin to the investigations done on the hit television series House. You start off with a set of facts and investigate, using a cause-and-effect analysis, to discover what is truly making the patient sick. “In the case of House, it leads to a diagnosis,” says Gary Bonner, RN, MBA, account manager at the Hopewell, VA–based Reliability Center, Inc., which provides healthcare organizations with advice and software tools for conducting RCAs and Failure Modes and Effects Analyses (FMEA). “In the case of RCAs, it’s an acknowledgment of the root causes and the physical, human, and latent causes of that problem.”

Keep surgery center survey preparation simple
If you're looking to achieve accreditation, keep it simple, plan ahead, and give yourself time for the application. Those are the steps Liz Diehl, RN, BSN, director of Summit Surgery Center in Chambersburg, PA, took prior to what she describes as her most relaxing Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC) survey. "They did not have any complaints at all [in the final report]," says Diehl. "We were in substantial compliance with everything."

AAAHC studies offer best-practice strategies
Want to know how your colleagues are improving procedure and discharge times for colonoscopies and cataract surgeries? You may want to check out the most recent studies from the Quality Institute of the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC). "We look for studies that we feel are important," says Naomi Kuznets, PhD, director of the AAAHC. "Cataract surgery is the number one procedure in an ambulatory setting. Colonoscopies are number two." The studies collected real-time data from August 2007-November 2007. The cataract study had 78 participants, and the colonoscopy study had 107.

Other recently-published articles from Ambulatory Quality and Compliance Insider:

Proposed changes would make doctors mark the site

How to comply with critical-result reporting requirements

Medication reconciliation challenges, confuses ASCs

Avoid these pitfalls when survey time comes around

Prevention, not punishment, key to patient safety

Nine healthcare professionals detail challenges

Ambulatory surgery center strides through seamless survey

Strategies for mastering the basics of benchmarking

How to protect sleep apnea patients from complications

AAAHC studies offer best-practice strategies

Keep surgery center survey preparation simple

Preserving evidence is essential for effective RCAs

Unsafe practice may cause infected medication vials

Managing significant event data to make improvements

Preaccreditation jitters: Is your ASC infected?

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