Disturbing Infection Control Standards at Outpatient Surgical Centers
A vast majority of all surgical procedures that are currently being performed in the US, are performed at ambulatory surgical centers or outpatient surgical centers. These centers are ideal for those patients who need to have a small procedure performed, but would rather not have the delays and formalities involved in an overnight hospital stay. In an outpatient surgical center, the procedure is performed and the patient is out of the hospital within 24 hours. Considering how many patients visit these surgical centers every month, it was very disturbing for Indiana medical malpractice lawyers to learn of a new report that shows that infection control standards at these centers, are disturbingly low.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted a review of approximately 68 ambulatory surgical centers situated in three states. 32 centers were situated in Maryland, 16 were in North Carolina and 20 in the state of Oklahoma. The researchers focused on five separate areas to measure compliance rates. They looked at hand hygiene, environmental cleaning, equipment reprocessing, injection safety and medication handling and blood glucose monitoring equipment handling.
The researchers found that out of the 68 centers that were studied, 46 had lapses in at least one area. That makes it close to 68% of the centers with at least one lapse. 12 had lapses in three or more of these areas, making it approximately 18% of the facilities. Out of the 68 outpatient surgical centers, 39 centers went on to be cited for infection control lapses, while 20 went on to be cited for medication administration lapses.
The most common lapses were seen in failure to follow best practices for equipment reprocessing and handling of blood group glucose monitoring equipment, as well as the use of single dose medication vials for more than one patient.
We don't hear much about infection control at outpatient surgical centers, unless there's a major catastrophe like the one that occurred at a Las Vegas outpatient surgical center, which exposed thousands of patients to hepatitis and HIV. Hopefully, this report will lead to increased oversight of outpatient surgical centers to bring down these infection rates.
