More money-saving ideas for the surgical suite
March 1, 1997 2 minutes read
More money-saving ideas for the surgical suite
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center pharmacy has hit on a simple idea to save time and money in the surgical suite: Recycle pre-filled syringes that go unused due to aborted surgeries. The trick behind the program, says clinical pharmacist Susan J. Skledar, BS, MPH, is to use tamper-resistant syringes. Unlike traditional syringes, tamper-resistant ones can’t be opened and put back together. "Once you take the cap off, you can’t put it back on," Skledar says.
Surgical patients at the University of Pittsburgh typically start off with a set-up kit containing pre-filled syringes of succinylcholine, ephedrine, and thiopental. Prior to the recycling program, the pharmacy often wasted these syringes because they couldn’t tell whether they might have been opened — even if a surgery had been cancelled. Now, the pharmacy can hang on to unused pre-filled syringes for up to four days for the ephedrine and about a week for the other two drugs.
Syringe recycling was just one of the ideas that Skledar and her colleagues used to bring down medication costs in the surgical suite. A review of anesthetics left some expensive neuromuscular blocking agents (atracurium and doxacurium) off the formulary.
Propofol use was tightened through such guilt-inducing tactics as tagging the medication’s bin with its price. Patients with short surgeries were switched to brevitol, and large bottles of propofol were removed from the formulary to stop waste.
In one year, these changes slashed the hospital’s purchase of anesthesiology medications by about 40%, with a cost savings of some $600,000. It was an achievement so commendable that Abbott Laboratories awarded the hospital a $1,500 prize for the effort. (See related story, p. 43.)
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