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surgery center administrator who was dinged for not having documentation of a correction plan for post-op infections. Turns out there was good reason for that. "We have never had a post-op infection and had documentation of that fact."
Sherry Butts, RN, BSN, the OR supervisor at the Albany (Ga.) Surgery Center, blames her surveyor for all the saline and Betadine she's wasting. "He wants us to use smaller bottles of saline and Betadine so we can pour out of them only one time and then throw them away," says Ms. Butts. Trouble is, she can only find Betadine in a 4-oz. bottle. "We are wasting so much money in saline and Betadine because we have to discard it after a single pour."
The surveyor also suggested head-scratching changes to Albany's documentation. Instead of ordering "post-op" X-rays, they now order "discharge" X-rays. Instead of checking patient records daily, the ASC's policy states that they check records "on days of operation" or "Monday to Friday." After all, the surveyor pointed out, the ASC isn't open on weekends.
The surveyor of a 1-OR surgery center took issue with the assignment sheets. "They said we didn't have enough information as to who was working and what their assignments were," says the administrator. Maybe that's because the ASC has the same staff doing the same things every week.
We're not making this stuff up
Like your colleagues, you could get dinged for hanging your lead aprons on pegs instead of hangers. For not checking the temperature of the mini refrigerator that you keep soda in for patients every day (tsk-tsk). For not having combination locks on any doors leading back to patient care areas. For not cleaning your gel pads and labeling your Cidex strips. For not having "topical anesthesia" listed on a surgeon's
