TEMECULA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)—The Veterans’ Administration’s West Los Angeles facility recently surpassed its second anniversary of implementing SurgiCount Medical’s Safety-Sponge™ System. Throughout these past two years, this VA facility has accounted for all sponges used in approximately 12,000 procedures. The implementation of this system came after a Veterans’ Administration initiative, the National VA Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP), which is aiming to use risk-adjusted outcomes to improve the quality of patient care. Within the NSQIP it stated that, on average, the Veterans’ Administration had a retained sponge in 1 in every 6,000 procedures. SurgiCount’s Safety-Sponge™ System consists of individually bar-coded surgical sponges and a portable scanner that enhances traditional manual sponge counts. The system is used by healthcare institutions around the country, including The University of California San Francisco Medical Center, University of Florida Shands, Loyola University Health Center, and INTEGRIS Health System, among many others. “This is a great success story that demonstrates when leadership is tasked to make improvements positive results can be achieved. By implementing the SurgiCount Safety-Sponge™ System the V.A. West Los Angeles has successfully addressed one area of its NSQIP and can now focus on addressing other outstanding issues,” says Rick Bertran, President of SurgiCount Medical. “The SurgiCount System has proven it works and the nursing staff sees and realizes the benefits from computer assisted counting. We use the system on all of our patients and for all of our procedures,” said Tim Goheen, Assistant Chief Nurse, Perioperative for V.A. West Los Angeles, and Co-Chair of the OR Nurse Manager Advisory Committee for the Veterans Administration.
About The VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare SystemThe VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System is the largest integrated healthcare organization in the Department of Veterans Affairs with 945 operating and authorized beds, 3,500 employees. It is a tertiary care facility classified as a Clinical Referral Level 1 Facility, and is a teaching hospital, providing a full range of patient care services, with state-of-the-art technology, as well as, education and research. Comprehensive health care is provided through primary care, tertiary care, and long-term care in areas of medicine, surgery, psychiatry, physical medicine and rehabilitation, neurology, oncology, dentistry, geriatrics, and extended care. The VAGLAHS is a part of VA Network 22, which includes facilities in Los Angeles, Long Beach, San Diego, Loma Linda and Las Vegas, Nevada.
About SurgiCount Medical, Inc. SurgiCount Medical, Inc., a division of Patient Safety Technologies, Inc. (OTCBB:PSTX - News), manufactures the SurgiCount Safety-Sponge™ System, a patented FDA 510(k) approved turn key solution to retained surgical sponges. The system is comprised of surgical sponges and towels affixed with an inseparable two-dimensional data matrix bar code and a SurgiCounter scanner to record each sponge before and after an operation. Because all sponges are identified with a unique code, they can not be counted twice. At the end of a procedure, the system can either immediately produce a printed report or the information can be imported into a database program. The SurgiCount Safety-Sponge™ System is also the only retained sponge system to offer complete sponge inventory tracking, reporting features, and integration with a medical facility’s IT system. For more information, please contact SurgiCount at (951) 587-6201, or visit www.surgicountmedical.com.
