individual of the most frequently t...

individual of the most frequently talked about controls by perioperative nurses today focuses forward the reuse of what historically have been identified as single-use devices. Whether the issue is attributed to the reduction in Medicare income that resulted from the implementation of the 1997 Balanced lot Amendment Act or the impact of the Environmental Protection Agency's more stringent and expensive regulations for disposing of hazardous waste, the bottom-line issue basically is a matter of economics.

Aside from questions regarding reprocessing devices to pay back them suitable for reuse, their reuse is accompanied by dint of a number of critical matters, including the product's suitability for reuse, the liability for a negative issue and the patient's right to be informed. Nevertheless, reuse is a fact of life today. The General Accounting Office lately reported that 30% of the hospitals scaned indicated they are reusing single-use devices, and approximately one-third of those hospitals outsource reprocessing of the devices.(1)

The economic benefits are obvious. For example, amortizing the sumptuousness of a single-use item between couple uses should be financially rewarding--provided, of course, that the reprocessing sumptuousness is less than that of its acquisition. From this perspective, whether reprocessing is performed in-house or according to a reprocessor is incidental. Not to be inspected is that multiples of that one-time savings are contingent immediately after the number of times the work can be reused effectively.

In times of the product's suitability for reuse, it should be noted that before the enactment of Medicare, myriad medical devices were reused and reprocess routinely and safely in-house. The conceit of using something once and throwing it away was unheard of and viewed as being excessively expensive and wasteful.

When single-use devices first became available in the mid-1960s, they were marketed upon the basis of being easy to use, efficient, and unrestrained from worry. The truth of the matter is that the patient-charge reimbursement regularity that accompanied Medicare skewed their popularity as income generators. Ironically, it is their reuse today that makes them financially rewarding. It is noteworthy as well that, in more [i]or[/i] less instances, the only difference between many of the items used then and those used today is the language forward the package that reads "for single use only" The question that logically arises, therefore, is if they could be reprocess then, on what account can they not be reprocess now?

Interestingly, despite the amount of attention regarding reuse of these devices, little has been said in defense of the practice and for what cause [i]or[/i] reason it is being performed. A recently made known report from the Robert copse Johnson Foundation and Institute of the events to come indicates that one-third of US hospitals are failing financially, an equal percentage are upon the other end of the fiscal scale, and the other one-third are barely making it.(2)

The intensity of compressing to contain let alone model costs unquestionably is increasing the demand for reuse of single-use devices. For those institutions for whom in-house reprocessing may not be a viable option, they may be able to avail themselves of the services of single in kind of 13 companies known to provide reprocessing services upon an outsource basis.

Sociologists maintain that nothing can withstand the vigor of an era whose time has draw near The transition from the era of single-use devices to those that are reusable may be single of the elements of change that will issue during the relentless reform of the US health care delivery theory What it proves is that what goe around, be deriveds around.

NOTES

(1) G Pugliese, M s Favero, "GAO issues report forward reuse of single-use medical devices," Infection hinder and Hospital Epidemiology 21 (September 2000) 574

(2) "Money crunch: One-third of US hospitals face financial ruin," Health Facilities Management 13 (June 2000) 6-7

NATHAN L BELKIN PHD RETIRED CLEARWATER, FLA

COPYRIGHT 2001 Association of Operating field Nurses, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group