Fire!

Earlier this month, Modern Healthcare published a story about the slow movement by hospitals to prevent operating room fires. An excerpt:Despite a slew of news accounts about patients being set on fire in operating rooms across the country, adoption of precautionary measures has been slow, often implemented only after a hospital experiences an accident. Advocates say it's not clear how many hospitals have instituted the available protocols, and no national safety authority tracks the frequency of surgical fires, which are thought to injure patients in one of every three incidents. About 240 surgical fires occur every year, according to rough estimates by the ECRI Institute, a not-for-profit organization that conducts research on patient-safety issues. But fires may be underreported because of fear of litigation or bad publicity. “Virtually all surgical fires are preventable,” said Mark Bruley, vice president of accident and forensic investigation for ECRI, which has been tracking operating-room fires for 30 years. He blames the persistence of the problem on the slow migration of best practices across the hospital industry.  Most surgical fires involve the ignition of concentrated oxygen by electrosurgical tools used in upper-body procedures, where patients receive the highly flammable gas through face masks and nasal devices. But a growing number are linked to the ignition of alcohol-based antiseptics.Solid numbers on the incidence of operati...

Source: Running a hospital - July 30, 2014 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs