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Earlier this year, Vested Medical and OrthoIllinois Surgery Center partnered to prove effectiveness of an off-site sterilization processing program at an outpatient ambulatory surgery center. Vested Medical demonstrated how such a system could help increase surgical capacity, reduce sterilization processing backlogs and minimize contamination risk while maintaining the highest standards of patient care for outpatient total joint procedures.
Vested Medical is building a network of standalone sterile processing centers for instruments and implants used in surgery. Its purpose is to run zero-defect operations which maximize quality and asset performance in all respects, including O.R. utilization, inventory performance and labor efficiency on both ends.
Sterile instrument trays were customized at the Vested Medical facility based on the surgical center’s schedule and orthopedic surgeon specifications. Upon delivery of sterile trays, post-procedure trays were removed, freeing space at the surgery center and maintaining optimum efficiency.
“The surgical staff shouldn’t feel that the process changed because Vested Medical is now part of it,” said Paul Borland, Vice President of Operations at Vested Medical. “We want to integrate to that level and in this case, the fact that the OrthoIllinois staff didn’t feel any changes validated the plan. There was always a clear channel of communication from scheduling to what was needed in the cases, and that was crucial to the success of the pilot.”
“Vested Medical is taking the approach that sterile processing is critical to healthcare and should be elevated,” he said. “We’re raising the bar on the profession and the product comes out of the professionals who work there.”
Full results of the pilot program are still being evaluated and another series of measures will be scheduled at a time to be announced.
