Ambulatory surgery has become a feasible substitute for inpatient admission in a number of procedures. The size and kinds of ambulatory surgery techniques continually expand which avers the safety and effectiveness of surgical operations performed within these localities. Ambulatory Surgery Centers have spurted in a short time, albeit the fact remains that there is a disparity in their organization, arrangement and procedures, which has resulted in various differences in patient treatment outcomes. These disparities within the practices have portended risks and consequently harm towards their patients. The risks often lead to surgical mishaps, which include patient infection and surgical operations on the unintended body parts (Bish et al, 2017). These risks for these dire results are augmented by surgical operations being conducted in unregulated settings with varied equivocal policies and processes as well as understaffed ambulatory surgery centers. This paper proposes a draft for ambulatory surgery centers.
Since amongst the greatest risks in the ambulatory surgical operations is an infection, its control provides a chance for probable mitigation of infection. Infection control has guidelines and processes that offer a fundamental set of tenets that govern the surgical treatment process. The tenets are based upon evidence from prior practices within the context of surgeries that are aimed at minimizing the risk of infection. These tenets entail; scrubs during surgeries, draping the patient, sterilizing, and analyzing risks before operating the patient. (Bish et al., 2017) There are also other complex care procedures such as apt patient choice and methods of operations even though it is quite impossible to incorporate these practices in all the ambulatory surgical centers because there are discrepancies in the way medical staff are trained, their experience in the field and a varied focus among them, as well as the fact that these requirements are not obligated by any governing body.
To efficiently assess risks, and comprehend the aspects of procedure and structure impacting on surgical risks in ambulatory surgical centers, a tool named socio-technical probabilistic risk assessment is used since it permits incorporation of estimates of risks acquired from averments of other practices and also allow utilization of experiments from health experts on the particular field. This tool is specifically very useful when approximating risks of infections in ambulatory surgery centers. It is an amalgam of qualitative procedure evaluation techniques and quantitative choice-espouse schemes. The major strengths associated with this tool are; representation of surgical procedures, system aspects and human aspects involved in the risk management, identifies the probable dire results of risks, informing of decisions of averting the risks and gives a basis of priority model for risk-reducing interventions (Bish et al., 2017). It offers a chance for assessment of records to be used to determine the risks and to mitigate them.
In order collaboratively avert and mitigate risks in ambulatory surgical centers, it is imperative that care providers incorporate technology in practice, redesign their workflow and focus on patient-centered schemes of treatment and seek to improve strategies that inform their decisions (“RFA,” n.d.). In conclusion, ambulatory surgical centers have become an area of great interest since it portends threats for the life of patients. Despite the increase in ambulatory surgical service providers, there are a few risk assessment strategies that have been developed, which has led to acuity amongst patients and the vastness of processes performed by the different centers necessitates a requirement for scientific evaluation of risk to help ambulatory surgeons better their practices.