processed and opened onto the back table. You simply connect it to
the driver. And battery lives have improved in several ways: The dura-
tion of full power is longer, there's more consistent power throughout
the length of the procedure and there's increased shelf life.
6. Improved packaging
Manufacturers are also increasingly aware of potentially wasteful
reprocessing costs. A lot of instruments are now packaged and
parceled in such a way that you only have to open the instruments
that you need, not the whole set. One system we use has 20 or 30 dif-
ferent tip options with different configurations of blades, shavers,
resectors and burs. But we only have to open the 1 or 2 that I may
use. The rest can be saved for the next procedure.
7. Ways to save
Speaking of reprocessing, while all this technology is helpful, it isn't
cheap. So a lot of facilities are looking for ways to save on accessories
like saw blades, drill bits, oscillating motorized shaver blades, tips and
burs. One way is to take advantage of many companies that reprocess
tools. They take them apart, clean them, sterilize them, re-lubricate
them and send them back to you, all for substantially less than the
cost of a new instrument.
You can also reduce costs by bundling purchases, which is what we
did when we renovated 2 of our ORs a little more than a year ago. We
listened to a lot of sales pitches, experimented with a lot of equipment
and ultimately went with a company that bundled everything — drills,
saws, handpieces, motorized shavers, burs and so on. That helps miti-
gate costs while you try to stay on the cutting edge of surgical tool
technology. OSM
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M A R C H 2 0 1 5 | O U T P A T I E N TS U R G E R Y. N E T
Dr. Bensen (christopher.bensen@orthocarolina.com) is an orthopedic surgeon specializing in sports
medicine at OrthoCarolina in Boone, N.C.
