Stories From
The Field

Elective Surgery Will Resume: Is Your SPD Ready?

By Steve Flowers, RN

Co-founder, Moab Healthcare

As Perioperative Healthcare Leaders, we can all agree that these are unprecedented times. Staffing and supply resources have rightfully been diverted to care of COVID 19 patients. Non-emergent and elective surgery has stopped. Medical-Surgical beds/units/floors in many hospitals nationwide are unoccupied. Once robust surgical schedules are blank, and many essential perioperative employees have been temporarily furloughed. This “Surgical Shutdown” is having a significant financial impact on the healthcare industry that is not sustainable.

More importantly, our communities need us to get back to work. There are many among us in dire need of surgical intervention to legitimately improve quality of life. People across this nation are suffering in silence while they wait for the restrictions on “elective” surgery to ease. The backlog is tremendous and soon the demand could overwhelm the resources.

The latest White House plans to “re-open” the economy include easing restrictions on outpatient procedures in Phase 1 and then to include inpatient procedures during Phase 2. Some states/ areas that have not been as heavily impacted by the pandemic have already started ramping up. Industry leaders will have to develop operational plans to manage the backlog of “elective” procedures and are predicting that the new normal may include surgical scheduling that extends later in the day and to include weekends. Many are predicting a surgical “tsunami”. The impact on Sterile Processing demand and resources will be impacted proportionally.

Moab Healthcare provides “Traveler” Sterile Processing Technicians to support your production needs when the “tsunami” arrives. ALL our technicians are CBSPD and/or IAHCSMM certified and have a minimum of 2 years of relevant Sterile Processing experience and can be deployed as rapidly as needed.