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A patient approach to surgery

New ambulatory center at Glendale Adventist is more personal than most operating rooms.

April 20, 2009|By Zain Shauk

Officials at Glendale Adventist Medical Center are hoping to get more personal with surgery patients.

The hospital’s newest facility, called the Ambulatory Surgery Center, is part of its continuing $230 million renovation and expansion project.

It is designed for patients undergoing surgeries that do not require them to recover at the facility overnight, said Janet Reynolds, business manager for the center.

But the site is unique from other hospital outpatient surgery centers because it is modeled after independent facilities, known as ambulatory surgery centers, which implement a compact and streamlined approach to treatment that is meant to be more efficient for doctors and more comfortable for patients than an experience within the airy hallways and operating rooms of hospitals, Glendale Adventist and independent officials said.

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Officials are hoping the $6 million facility, which is on the bottom floor of a new, independently owned building on the hospital campus, will give the hospital an edge over other health-care facilities, Chief Operating Officer Warren Tetz said.

“It enhances the profile, both for the patient and for the physician, because a free-standing [ambulatory surgery center] is more convenient,” Tetz said.

Tetz anticipates the center will generate a significant amount of revenue, although it will yield about 4% of the hospital’s total earnings, he said.

“It’s only 4%, but if there’s an enhancement in profile, either for service reasons or for financial reasons, it’s important to us,” he said.

The center will treat all elective surgical procedures that don’t require an overnight stay, ranging from knee replacements to plastic surgeries, Reynolds said.

It resembles a “homey” doctor’s office, with a waiting room fitted with a flat-screen TV, toys and magazines, she said.

Patients visiting the center will move from the waiting room through two doors to a preoperative preparation area, where nurses will check their vital signs and put them on beds fitted with warming devices similar to electric blankets, she said.

The Bair Hugger warming machines are used to help increase comfort because the facility, along with other surgery centers, maintains low temperatures to keep equipment in optimal working conditions, she said.

Patients would then move into an adjacent operating room before being led into a recovery area at the end of their circuit.

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