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O P H T H A L M O L O G Y
FRONTLINE FEEDBACK
What Makes Eye Centers Tick?
W
e surveyed managers and administrators at leading eye facilities for their best tips
on improving cataract efficiency. Here's what some of them had to say.
• Room turnovers. Bill Benson, BSN, administrator of the Columbus (Neb.) Surgery Center,
employs 3 scrub techs to speed room turnovers: one to assist the surgeon during the current case, one to clean instruments used during the previous case and one to set up supplies for the following case, during which she'll assist the surgeon. They run that cycle all
day, rotating through roles and turning over rooms together. (Mr. Benson also stacks right
and left eyes in the surgical schedule so his staff doesn't have to flip equipment from one
side of the room to the other between cases.)
Ensure every member of your clinical team has specific roles during room turnovers. For
example, at the end of each case at the Physicians' Eye Surgery Center in Charleston, S.C.,
the circulator administers post-op eye drops, removes the surgical drape and moves the
patient to recovery; the scrub tech cleans instruments and takes them to the reprocessing
area; and a dedicated turnover nurse cleans up the trash, wipes down the room's surfaces
and begins opening supplies for the next case.
• Implant inventory. Jackie Dayton, RN, nursing supervisor at the Surgery Center of
Ophthalmology Consultants in Fort Wayne, Ind., keeps an inventory of 6 to 8 lenses per
diopter, from +6.0 to +30.0. She works a week ahead on the surgical schedule to ensure they
have the needed implants on site, which means she pays standard shipping costs instead of
incurring overnight costs when getting lenses delivered to the facility.
• Instrument sets. Have enough instruments to match your case volume and the speed of
your surgeons, says Sarah Hilligoss, RN, BSN, clinical director of the Prairie Surgery Center
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O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | J A N U A R Y 2013
