INSIDE THE CURRENT ISSUE May 2010

News

 
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Community SPD boosts productivity to improve patient care

For some sterile processing departments, what they do on a daily basis simply is regarded as a job, a set of tasks to service the operating room directly, and the patients indirectly. For others, sterile processing also represents a calling and a viable career path. But Toms River, NJ-based Community Medical Center also regards what they do as a crusade for how sterile processing and distribution departments and professionals should act, operate and be valued.

Up Close
Experts offer mixed reviews about coding hopes, reality
  

Operating Room
Monitoring devices morphing into high-tech patient accessory

Hospitals are a veritable treasure trove of advanced and ever-evolving technologies, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the patient monitoring segment. Those cumbersome, tethered and isolated "spot-check" monitoring units are being replaced by smaller, flexible and mobile state-of-the-art devices that can integrate more easily with hospital information systems and remain perched near the patient.

Infection Connection
Growing IP duties, influence outpacing pay hikes

Today, ICPs’ work touches virtually every aspect of the healthcare facility and patient care; yet their time and efforts are fragmented, scattered in different directions, with healthcare-acquired infections not always receiving priority, presenting an obstacle to performing their work as they would like to and need to. But at least salaries are inching up.

Infection Protection
HAI battleground: Housekeeping hot spots

IAHCSMM Viewpoint

Self-Study Series
The slide-rule of sterile processing best practice:
Do you measure up?

CS Solutions
Cooling instruments; double pouching; cleaning verification

Central Services

Sterile Processing Equipment/Technology Guide

From washers, decontaminators, sterilizers and other relevant technology to the accessories needed to reprocess medical/surgical devices, sterile processing professionals need information to make optimal choices. Healthcare Purchasing News highlights and spotlights what’s available.

Sterile Processing Equipment/Technology Vendor Charts

Products and Services

Plugging the gaps:
Supply chain must fortify critical care, surgical services

Ask supply chain management to grade its own customer service performance to the critical care and surgical service areas and it might acknowledge problems but justify the kinks to the frenetic pace and unpredictability of the cardiac/coronary and intensive care units as well as the surgical suites. But maybe it’s just a communications problem.

What Works

New Products

People & Opinions

Fast Foreward

Newsmaker
A New IDN Model

Letters

2010 Supply Chain Trends

Back Talk
Best practice: Negotiating from a win-win perspective
by David S. Kaczmarek

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