It is the primary goal of every surgeon to provide quality medical care in times of need. Surgeons of all backgrounds and specialities perform a litany of procedures every year: in the UK alone, approximately 10 million surgeries were performed in 2019. From small, minor and cosmetic procedures to life-saving surgeries, the demand for these services is high.
Surgical practices have plenty of considerations to evaluate day-to-day in order to safely and effectively provide their services. It is imperative to evaluate these concerns and ensure that both patients and practices alike are properly safeguarded and cared for in times of need.
Below, let’s examine four crucial considerations that any and all surgical practices must make to ensure long-term safety and stability.
Medical Indemnity Insurance
At the core of any successful surgical practice is the guarantee that a simple mistake doesn’t transform into a business-ending catastrophe. Medical indemnity insurance is the primary safeguard against such a fate. Every surgeon needs to find out more about medical indemnity before making any other liability-related decisions.
What is medical indemnity insurance? In simple terms, medical indemnity insurance protects surgeons from expensive or serious claims of malpractice as a result of surgeries provided. Given that there are thousands of malpractice claims filed each year, the odds of an individual surgeon facing such a situation is higher than many might expect. In many cases, maintaining surgeon licencing requires medical indemnity insurance.
Companies such as Incision provide low-cost, premium medical indemnity insurance policies to surgeons that protect them during the claims process. To find out more about medical indemnity, visit Incision’s website and its list of comprehensive surgical insurance options.
Anaesthesia
Surgical services are complex and varied, but virtually all major forms of surgery require some form of anaesthesia. Approximately one-quarter of UK surgeries require anaesthesia, meaning it is a major consideration for surgical practices.
Depending on the scale and scope of the surgical practice, outsourced anaesthesia services may be the best course of action. However, larger practices may be able to justify employing a full-time anaesthesia department to handle such preparations for surgery.
Regardless of choice, no surgical practice can operate effectively without some comprehensive component of anaesthesia service guaranteed.
Contagion and Contamination
With COVID-19 showing the entire world that pandemics are not a thing of the past, surgical providers must be well-equipped to handle the safety of patients beyond direct surgical concerns. As such, employing a variety of initiatives to aggressively control any contamination or contagious situations involving patients and staff must be a primary goal.
Recommended pandemic practices for surgeons include a plethora of guidelines. Among them, triaging non-emergency surgeries, utilising virtual outpatient clinics for diagnoses and enlisting the services of retired surgeons (when surgeon bandwidth is stretched to the maximum) are primary operational recommendations.
Additionally, key provisions that ensure the protection of surgery workforces is crucial. This not only helps ensure optimal surgical capacity exists during times of strain on the healthcare system, but minimises the likelihood of staff potentially spreading infectious diseases between patients.
Consistent Training
While it can be easy to consider the skills, experience and training of surgeons as the only crucial component to successful surgical outcomes, the reality is that staff must also be properly and consistently trained. Performing a wide variety of functions during surgeries, nurses and other healthcare workers assist with surgical procedures on a daily basis. As such, any faltering by them can impact patient outcomes.
Periodic and universal training should be a top priority for surgical practices, ensuring that every employee involved with any surgical procedures is trained to their utmost potential. Even for those with top-tier training, refresher training courses can be a great way to ensure knowledge isn’t lost or otherwise applied unevenly during surgeries.
Every surgical practice must make a variety of decisions and evaluations when engaged in such sensitive and complex healthcare procedures. These four examples are some of the biggest considerations that any surgical facility should evaluate on a consistent basis to ensure optimal outcomes for patients and staff alike.
