The best defense: Anesthesiologist Dr. Stephen Punzak on the value of appropriate preop evaluations

How Every ASC Nurse Can Create a Culture of Patient Safety

Nurses are integral to the culture of safety in every ASC across the country. This post explores four strategies that can place safety at the forefront of your ASC’s patient care culture.

How to Interpret the Results of a Sleep Study for an ASC Nurse

Practical Considerations for Sleep Apnea Management

Last week we discussed how to screen patients for undiagnosed sleep apnea. This week, let's continue the discussion by delving into practical considerations for sleep apnea management. There are many factors to consider, but we want to focus on what’s practical and within the surgery center’s scope. We want to focus on easy-to-implement, cost-effective, efficient ways to best help these patients.

PreOp Screening for Patients with Sleep Apnea

With over 70% of Americans considered overweight or obese, ambulatory surgery centers are handling patients with higher BMIs than ever before. So how do we stay competitive with hospitals? Surgery centers need to know how to safely take care of obese patients that often have sleep apnea.

A PreOp Nurse’s Guide to Ejection Fraction and CHF- Part 2

As we learned in Part 1 of this article, EF is one of the most, if not THE most important thing to know about any patient that you are preoping because of the profound implications of EF on a patient’s overall health as well as how the patient will respond to anesthesia.

4 Reasons Why Surgery Centers Fail & How You Can Avoid Them

When opening an ambulatory surgery center, there's lots of planning involved and many expenditures are required. To get your business started on the right foot, here are a few critical (but common) mistakes that can mean failure for your ASC:  

An Administrator's Guide to Successful Tech Adoption

What makes or breaks the successful adoption of new technology at your surgery center? ASCs are consistently being pushed to move in the direction of streamlined, paperless workflows, and Administrators have never been more integral to the on-boarding process. In this post, we'll review the top 3 reasons that ASCs fail at technology adoption and what can be done to prevent embarking upon a potentially costly project that returns very little ROI.

5 Big Changes You Can Make Today to Improve Patient Satisfaction (without spending a nickel!)

Patient satisfaction can make or break the success of your ASC. As an anesthesiologist, I broke down 5 changes you can implement to keep your patients happy without costing you anything!  Here are my thoughts: