New tech designed to limit surgical errors

Here in FierceHealthcare, we've written often on the difficulty hospitals face in cutting down on the rate of serious surgical mistakes [1], including wrong-site or wrong-person surgeries. Perhaps this approach will help. A St. Louis-area physician has invented a new technology, the CheckSite System, which proposes to make it far more difficult to make sure mistakes. When hospitals use CheckSite, the patient wears a wristband with a microchip, and there's two sensors on near each operating room door. If the OR team doesn't verify and mark the proper site, then deactivate the band with a sticker, the sensors go off.

Right now, six healthcare centers are using CheckSite, and five plan to buy it. Wristbands cost $2.50 per patient, and the OR sensors cost about $3,000 per pair-but hospitals who do more than 10,000 surgeries a year get the sensor for free on loan.

To learn more about this approach:
- read this St. Louis Post-Dispatch article [2]

Related Articles:
Study: Pre-op briefing can lower surgical errors. Report [3]
MA surgical errors persist despite efforts to address them. Report [1]