AMBULATORY SURGERY CENTERS
Currently, Ambulatory Surgery Centers (ASCs) have increased focus from accreditation agencies due to the increased number of patients receiving treatment and the increased level of complexity of provided services. On March 2019, Medicare Payment Report to the congress (Medicare) CH 5, specified the existence of 5532 Medicare-certified ASCs, compromising 16,000 operating rooms, serving 3.4 million Medicare beneficiaries with an associated cost of $ 4.3 billion.
CMS conditions for coverage require that ASCs maintain an ongoing program to prevent, control, and investigate infections and communicable diseases for ASCs patients and personnel. Conduct activities that monitor/track infections in accordance with recognized infection control surveillance practices, such as those used by the NHSN. Follow up on each patient after discharge to track healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). The program must be based on national guidelines, for example; CDC, APIC, SHEA, and AORN.
National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) published the Outpatient Procedure Component (OPC) for ASCs. This protocol is designed to address the unique needs of the ASCs, to help facilities meet State reporting requirements and CMS conditions of coverage requirements. Furthermore, OPC has a component to identify and track surgical site infection; which enables ASCs to benchmark against nationally aggregated data and data collection for tall payer types.
Infection prevention and control programs for ambulatory surgery centers can be a challenge and a major source of citation from accreditation agencies. Some of the challenges include pre-cleaning of instruments at point of use, proper reprocessing of used instruments and scopes, transport and storage of sterilized instruments and scopes. Other tasks include measure and track of the same day surgeries related infection.
IPCxpert applies the OPC protocol, monitors staff compliance with infection prevention/control clinical practice guidelines and strategies, tracks incidence of surgical site infections and other adverse healthcare outcomes, empowers use of surveillance data for measuring clinical quality and bench marking performance, employs positive change(s) in patient care practices, public reporting and other liability purposes, and builds knowledge related to infection risk in ASCs environment.
Furthermore, IPCxpert provides audit tools to verify sterilization and high-level disinfection process, detailed policies and education programs, infection control plan, risk assessment based on patient population and performed procedures, plan evaluation, goals and data reporting. IPCxpert is an expert in ASCs that can provide multiple services to your facility including but not limited to:
- Best practices on terminal cleaning and cleaning products
- Cleaning between cases
- Infection control guidelines and strategies during procedures
- Sterilization and high-level disinfection guidelines
- Best practices for reprocessing of Endoscopes, Bronchoscopes, Vaginal probes and TEE probes
- Sterile storage room
- Humidity, air flow, air temp, and air pressure guidelines
- PACU
- Sterile field
- Surgical attire
- Hand hygiene/scrub technique
- Patient skin prep
- Prophylaxis administration
- Prevention and corrective action plan for reduction of Surgical site infection
- Surgical site infection apparent cause analysis.