By Healthcare Facilities Today

Quality assurance is pivotal to patient safety and ongoing process improvement, according to Nicole Gritton, RN, vice president of nursing and ambulatory surgery center operations at Laser Spine Institute.  

Becker's Clinical & Quality Control website reported on Gritton's presentation at the recent 20th Annual Ambulatory Surgery Centers Conference in Chicago. She shared some tips for ASCs looking to assess and improve patient care, organizational efficiencies and human performance.

1. Focus on infection prevention to improve patient outcomes.

2. Ensure quality assurance programs incorporate basic, essential components.

3. Implement organized data collection and identify areas of process improvement. 

4. Select a QA program coordinator. 

Designate someone as an infection preventionist who conducts quarterly infection control assessments and evaluations, Gritton's suggested in the article. This will motivate the ASC staff to stay on track.

"It's certainly an incentive if they know every month or every quarter they're going to get called out for doing a great job, or they're going to get called out for having opportunity for improvement," she said in the article.

Read the article.