Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.
Issue link: http://outpatientsurgery.uberflip.com/i/736989
"provided the instrument manufacturer allows in their IFUs for use of the ultrasonic," says Ms. Segal — before you disinfect and sterilize them. • Rapid readout biological indicators. You no longer have to wait hours to release instruments while you're waiting for the results of the biological indicator (BI). New BIs tell you in 1 hour, not 3 or 24 hours, if your sterilizer met the time, temperature and pressure parameters. "We don't have to hold instruments for 3 hours anymore," says Ms. White. Buy more instruments Tim Brooks, BS, CSPM, senior manager of sterile processing at Banner University Medical Center in Tucson, Ariz., says OR leaders often overlook 2 universal truths about reprocessing. • You can't bring in new doctors without bringing in new instruments for those doctors. The return on investment on a $10,000 set of laparo- scopic instruments is "tremendous," says Mr. Brooks, "and it can last for 15 to 20 years," but the faulty logic is that SPD can keep up with demand. • You can't overbook your instruments, meaning you can't schedule more cases than your instrument inventory or your reprocessing capac- ity can accommodate. The day won't go well if you've scheduled 12 cataract cases and you only have 2 eye sets. "You have to build up inventory to meet your needs," says Mr. Brooks. "Instead, we respond to demands instead of managing demands. You're managing a factory. You need a materials manage- ment understanding to make it work." Mr. Brooks points out that a sterilization department can manage thousands of different instruments from dozens of different manufac- turers, each with its own cleaning, testing and sterilization instructions. 1 0 6 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • O C T O B E R 2 0 1 6