What is it about Las Vegas that seems to bring out some of the worst incidents involving surgery centers? It’s been 16 months since the Southern Nevada Health District sent out its initial warning to some 40,000 patients that received injected anesthesia at the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada who may have been exposed to hepatitis C. The fallout of that event (beside hundreds of infections) included the Nevada state Legislature passing Assembly Bill 123, which subjects ASCs to yearly, unannounced inspections by state and local authorities.

Now comes news of the state’s Health Division sending a cease-and-desist letter to two Las Vegas stores — licensed for health food and vitamins — apparently acting as illegal, unlicensed ASCs. According to the story in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the surgical procedures performed in a back room of each of the stores, literally. An inspection found various unsafe practices there, including finding medical waste in the stores and in a nearby trash bin.

There isn’t one ASC owner who wouldn’t mind facing the extra scrutiny that they now do in Nevada, if it will prove, and continue to do so, that ASCs are some of the top medical facilities in infection control in the country. But events like these shed the industry in a different light (unfairly, in my mind), especially in the leery eyes of the public, whom ASCs rely upon.

A new pilot study from the Mayo Clinic states that short, preoperative team briefings improves communication, and reduces errors and costs. While the study focused on cardiac surgery, I believe this is important for any and all medical (and business, for that matter) environments, including the outpatient/ambulatory surgery center industry.

According to the authors, results of this study included miscommunication events were reduced by 53 percent; also medical supplies waste was reduced. The key to the briefings were simple, in the authors’ minds — each person on the team was given a chance to speak during the briefing. Results from the Mayo Clinic pilot are published online in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. Click HERE to view the abstract.

I, like you, was initially floored by Tuesday’s release of a survey by the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care Institute for Quality Improvement on the current economy’s effect on the entire outpatient/ASC industry, due to a decrease in demand. But at the same time, this study also contradicts a couple of major reports stating the contrary. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's report on outpatient surgery, released in January, showed that not only that the number of centers had grown considerably in a 10-year period, but that the number of procedures had increased as well. (Granted, the reported only collected data through 2006, the year before the recession started.) Also, there was last month’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which saw the healthcare industry add 13,500 jobs in March — the largest amount coming from ASCs and outpatient centers, which added 3,200 workers.

So where is the industry now? Should we panic like Chicken Little, proclaiming the proverbial ‘sky is falling’, bury our heads in the sand like an ostrich — having total disregard for the economic situation around us, or something in between? This is a question (or something similar) that has to be going around the people attending this year’s ASC meeting in Nashville, Tenn., which opens this evening. And this is also a question we at SurgiStrategies hope to get an answer on as well from everyone — ASC Association brass, physicians, owners, vendors, etc. So be on the lookout for something from us about it in an upcoming blog or issue.