Dr. Vikram .R. Lotwala

Three Fast Ways to Build General Surgery Volume If you look at what brings the most bottom line Contribution Margin (or Profit) into your hospitals, it is probably General Surgery . More that Othro, Neuro, Cardio, or Cancer, good ole’ General Surgery brings in the most profit. But General Surgery is almost never promoted like a service line. It never gets the love like the big sub-specialty procedures. But this Plain Jane is a big bottom line producer. So how do you drive in more of this business? #1 Emergency Department Promotion We will talk about all the ways to promote the right kind of ER traffic in another post. But this much is true, the money you spend on driving the community to the ER when they have abdominal pain or any other hard to explain symptoms pays off in spades. #2 Promoting Minimally Invasive Surgery and Other Technologies Everybody gets it: a scope through a tiny hole in my belly is much better that cutting me wide open . Studies show that people ...

Background Surgery has become an integral part of global health care, with an estimated 234 million operations performed yearly. Surgical complications are common and often preventable. We hypothesized that a program to implement a 19-item surgical safety checklist designed to improve team communication and consistency of care would reduce complications and deaths associated with surgery. Methods Between October 2007 and September 2008, eight hospitals in eight cities (Toronto, Canada; New Delhi, India; Amman, Jordan; Auckland, New Zealand; Manila, Philippines; Ifakara, Tanzania; London, England; and Seattle, WA) representing a variety of economic circumstances and diverse populations of patients participated in the World Health Organization's Safe Surgery Saves Lives program. We prospectively collected data on clinical processes and outcomes from 3733 consecutively enrolled patients 16 years of age or older who were undergoing noncardiac surgery. We subsequently collected data on ...