There are subtle chains of events that can shutdown a surgery center with little or no warning See if you can identify the root cause of this failure.
Imagine you just took over management of a successful ambulatory surgery center (ASC).
One cold winter morning the director of nursing tells the administrator that they are having problems maintaining humidity in the operating rooms. An HVAC service technician comes and inspects the rooftop unit, as well as the boiler room and finds nothing wrong. Some minor fitting modifications are made to improve water flow to the rooftop unit to get humidity just within required levels.
One week later the instrument washer suddenly stops working. Instruments are coming out of the washer covered with debris and looking very corroded. An emergency service call has to be made to the washer vendor. There are enough surgical trays to get through the day, but the washer needs to be fixed soon to prepare for tomorrow. The washer service technician’s preliminary assessment is that the 11 year old washer probably needs replaced.
Just a few hours later water starts leaking through the ceiling in the central sterile supply storage room. Upon inspection, it appears the water is being blown out of the ventilation duct and it is leaking through the ceiling tiles.
Water is falling at a steady pace and within 15 minutes it is evident that the HVAC system has to be shut off to stop water from further contaminating sterile supplies. By turning off the HVAC system all control of temperature and humidity in the operating rooms is lost. If humidity requirements cannot be met, surgery has to stop completely to prevent medical gases from igniting fires in the operating rooms.
Today’s remaining surgeries have to be rescheduled and all instruments have to be sent out for cleaning. In another hour you have to start calling tomorrow morning’s surgeons and patients and tell them their cases have to be postponed. A large quantity of surgical supplies have to be destroyed, and the technician fees are costing you hundreds of dollars per hour.
How did this go so bad so fast?
Answer: ASC due diligence item #117: Inspect water softener and note salt levels.
A water softener failure will not trigger any alarms to go off. However, in communities with hard water the failure of an ASC’s water softener will quickly result in calcium and lime deposits building up inside the pipes of the HVAC rooftop unit and the instrument washer. This is not a what if scenario. It happens.
A quick due diligence inspection could have saved this business tens of thousands of dollars of unnecessary service expenses, revenue losses, and downtime. If you are in the market to buy or sell an ASC, don’t let unexpected failures like this happen to you.
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HCTadvisor provides healthcare-focused business data. Contact HCTadvisor today at (303) 800-6444.