• 07
  • July
    2010

A recent federal study conducted at 68 ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs) has turned up a number of problems in the area of infection control. The study looked at ASCs in three states including North Carolina, Maryland and Oklahoma. The impetus behind the study was at least in part due to a 2008 Hepatitis C outbreak in a Las Vegas facility that eventually led to several medical malpractice lawsuits.

ASCs are generally used to perform surgical procedures that do not require full admission to a hospital such as orthopedic, gynecological, gastric, ophthalmic and cosmetic procedures.

The study focused on five main areas of concern as they relate to infection control: hand hygiene, environmental cleaning, injection safety, equipment reprocessing, and the handling of diabetes monitoring equipment.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 46 of the 68 ASC facilities suffered an infection control procedure lapse in at least one of the five categories listed above. Twelve facilities failed in three or more categories.

Other key findings include:

Nearly 20% of the facilities experienced a lapse in hand hygiene, which includes hand washing and the proper use of gloves.
19% of the facilities failed to properly sanitize surfaces in which patients were likely to come into contact.
28% of the facilities reused single-dose medical vials for multiple patients.
21% of the facilities that performed diabetes testing reused a single lancet device for more than one patient.

The CDC noted that these results were not measuring actual infections being passed to patients; they only measure lapses in infection control procedures.

Dr. Philip S. Barie, editor in chief of the journal Surgical Infections, wrote an editorial that appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association along with the study and concluded that, if these statistics are representative, than several million patients could be at risk of developing serious infections every year.


Related Resources:

Surgery Centers Have Poor Infection Control, CDC Says