Outpatient Surgery Magazine - Subscribers

Helping Hand - Outpatient Surgery Magazine - July 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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sure CPT codes are included and the payment is going to cover every- thing — including the rare case of an overnight stay," says Ms. Van Alstine. "Remember, this is a new procedure so you may have to go back through your payer contracts and make sure everything is cov- ered." 4. Total thyroidectomy. Some procedures aren't reimbursed by CMS, but still get great reimburse- ments from private payers in most cases. One such procedure is an outpatient total thyroidectomy, a minimally invasive surgery to remove a patient's entire thyroid. Such a pro- cedure has become a high- volume staple at Ohio Surgery Center in Columbus, where 137 of these procedures were conducted last year alone. Like any new surgical endeavor, you'll want to start slowly with this procedure because instrumentation could be pricey, and there may be some growing pains in terms of your scheduling. "You don't want to go guns blazing and buy 5 sets of instruments if you're just starting out and haven't done any cases," says Suzi Walton, the facil- ity administrator at Ohio Surgery Center. "When we started, we couldn't do more than 2 thyroid cases per day. As we grew the pro- gram, we reinvested accordingly." Speaking of instrumentation, you'll need a soft tissue tray and a thyroid tray, as well as a harmonic scalpel — a device that can 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 • J U L Y 2 0 1 9 • TOTAL THYROIDECTOMY Traditionally, the thyroid has been removed through a neck incision that leaves a permanent scar. More recently, mini- mally invasive and "scarless" approaches such as transoral thyroidectomy have become popular in some parts of the world.

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