5 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 • D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 6
Ambulatory surgical centers will soon
have another incentive to warm patients.
CMS proposed 7 new measures to the
ASC Quality Reporting Program for 2020
payment determinations. One of those
measures, "ASC-13: Normothermia
Outcome," requires ambulatory surgery
centers to validate that they're prevent-
ing hypothermia. Specifically, ASCs must
measure the percentage of patients hav-
ing surgical procedures under general or
neuraxial anesthesia of 60 minutes or
more in duration who are normothermic
within 15 minutes of arrival in PACU.
ASCs will start collecting and submitting data directly to CMS via
a CMS Web-based tool on Jan. 1, 2017.
"With CMS adding new quality measures that ASCs have to
report, this will certainly heighten awareness and the importance
of keeping patients normothermic," says anesthesiologist David
Shapiro, MD, of Tallahassee, Fla., an ASC Quality Collaboration
board member. "The real beneficial side of this kind of measure-
ment is it will institutionalize and popularize the assessments of
patients when they come out of the OR. Certainly for procedures
that are 60 minutes or longer, the extent that people become
aware of the importance of keeping warm is vital, and that we
start monitoring patients before going into the OR, intraoperative-
ly and in post-op." — Dan Dunkin
QUALITY REPORTING
ASCs Must Track Normothermia
"With CMS adding new quality meas-
ures that ASCs have to report, this
will certainly heighten awareness
and the importance of keeping
patients normothermic."
— David Shapiro, MD
Pamela
Bevelhymer,
RN,
BSN
