COVER STORY
great for those that need additional education in those areas and receive educational credits. At our ASC, we have someone attend the billing/cod- ing portion, while I attend the ASC management portion.” She appreciates the convenience of being able to attend sessions from any of the tracks, she says. “If I want to jump over and sit in in one of the spe- cialty coding sessions, like orthopedic or ENT, I can. I can make choices. I don’t have to stick with one track.” For Russell, the top three benefits of the winter seminar are “staying on top of the new rules and regulations of our industry, continuing education and networking.” She holds a CASC cre- dential and the winter seminar helps her earn the credits she needs to main- tain it. “I wouldn’t miss this meeting.”
Speaker Highlights
Thomas J. Stallings, attorney at McGuireWoods in Richmond, Vir- ginia, and Laurie Roderiques, RN, CASC, clinical consultant at Ambula- tory Healthcare Strategies in Roches- ter, New York, will present “Put Peer Review to Work to Protect Your ASC” in the ASC Management track. “Improperly handled peer review can be financially and operationally disastrous,” Stallings says. “In an age when excluded doctors and injured patients are quick to sue surgery cen- ters over peer review decisions, well- run surgery centers must review their peer review process before they are served with a lawsuit.” This interactive session will cover
peer review essentials from an admin- istrative, accreditation, policy, risk management and legal perspective and will help administrators create a mean- ingful peer review program that meets regulatory requirements, manages legal risk and promotes buy-in from reviewing physicians, he says. “With a presentation that includes real-world case studies and ample opportunity for
■■ Don’t
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questions and answers, you will walk away with practical tools you can use at your ASC the day you return home.” Roderiques says, “Often times, as administrators and those responsible for overseeing the credentialing aspect of providers, peer review is overlooked or treated as an afterthought. This ses- sion will provide you with an under- standing of just how important, if not essential, peer review actually is.” Peer reviews are like checks and balances of the practice standards of a provider, she says, they are like a competency list. “It’s almost like an insurance plan for the center,” she says. “In my part, I will discuss the findings on a surveyor level, the important things to incorporate and the things not to do.” Roderiques suggests ASCs to do
the following: ■■
Make sure that the review is peer to peer, between like types of practitio- ners, don’t have nurses do physician peer reviews.
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Follow center policies regarding peer review; make sure the reviews mirror the center’s policies.
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Find a physician champion to sup- port the process—a physician who understands the process.
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Encourage physician involvement in the process. Ask your providers what they believe should be included in the peer review process. Roderiques advises ASCs to not do
the following: 12 ASC FOCUS NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018|
ascfocus.org ■■ assign staff member.
Don’t wait until the last minute. Peer review is used for recreden- tialing. The last thing you want to do is have 30 peer reviews the week before recredentialing.
Don’t leave your center unprotected from a lawsuit. Bill Schmelzer, senior account man- ager at Halyard Health in Alpharetta, Georgia, will present “MRSA, A Per- sonal Case Study” in the Infection Pre- vention track.
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In 2016, Schmelzer had a left hip arthroplasty followed by a life-threat- ening MRSA infection. “The presenta- tion is a personal story of my collision with MRSA, a patient’s perspective from a person who has 40 years of experience in med-surg marketing,” he says. “One of the objectives of the presentation is to describe appropri- ate use of personal protective equip- ment (PPE) and isolation precautions in acute care, the operating room (OR) and sub-acute environments. I was an isolate for 45 days out of 48 days of hospitalization. If they could have got- ten an earlier diagnosis, it would have been all 48.”
The presentation will cover elements
of surgery that health care employees know but may not always think about, he says. “Theoretically, this infection came from an exogeneous source, but the cause-and-effect is hard to define. We don’t know where this infection originated, but the air movement in the OR, the lint in the OR, room turnover, PPE, all play a part. “Everything you do matters,” he says. “From what you wear and how you wear it, aseptically opening the case and setting the sterile field, positioning the patient to avoid neuro and vascular injury, effective skin prep, maintenance of sterile field and technique, mainte- nance of core body temperature, timing of set-up to be as close to patient entry
peer review to a
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