Dr. Robert Brooker to present on multimodal blood conservation at ANESTHESIOLOGY 2013
Sheridan Healthcare Anesthesiologist to Present at ASA Annual Meeting
<0> Sheridan Healthcare, Inc.Erica Park, 954-838-2956orGreenough CommunicationsRachel Vaccari, 617-275-6521 </0>
., a hospital-based, multispecialty physician services company and leading national anesthesia services provider, today announced that anesthesiologist Robert F. Brooker, M.D. will present at the American Society of Anesthesiologists’s annual meeting, ANESTHESIOLOGY 2013, in San Francisco, October 12-16.
The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) is an educational, research and scientific society with more than 50,000 members, united to raise and maintain the standards of the medical practice of anesthesiology. At ASA’s annual meeting, which brings together anesthesiologists, residents and other health care professionals from around the country, Dr. Brooker will present his experience with multimodal blood conservation as a tactic to reduce intraoperative blood transfusion.
“Cardiac surgery programs are under increasing scrutiny to provide the highest quality care, and the rate of transfusions is an important measurement of quality of care,” explained Dr. Brooker. “I’m eager to share these findings which demonstrate how hospitals can considerably reduce their transfusion rate by standardizing their blood conservation procedures.”
Dr. Brooker’s poster presentation will detail the successful blood conservation program he implemented at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Fla., using a variety of strategies recommended by the Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists (SCA) and Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS). Dr. Brooker’s program demonstrated that by standardizing blood conservation practices with these established techniques, hospitals can significantly reduce both the number of transfusions needed and the amount of blood used in each transfusion. Since Dr. Brooker began his program in 2008, the percentage of Memorial Regional Hospital patients with exposure to transfusion dropped from 59% in 2006 to 27% in 2011, and the initial 1.7 units of blood needed per cardiac surgery patient dropped to .33 units of blood per patient. This reduction has helped earn Memorial Regional Hospital its current 3-star rating from the STS, the highest rating awarded by the organization.
“At Sheridan, we are always striving to develop and implement the safest and most effective practices in anesthesiology and all of our service areas,” said Robert Coward, president of Sheridan Healthcare. “We are proud that Dr. Brooker, one of our own anesthesiologists, has developed such a successful program and will be able to share it with others in the field to better patient care across the country.”
Dr. Brooker has practiced anesthesiology at Memorial Regional Hospital for five years and is the Chief of Cardiac Anesthesia. He is also a clinical associate professor at Wake Forest University.
Sheridan Healthcare, Inc. is a national hospital-based, multispecialty physician services company that provides anesthesiology, radiology, emergency medicine, neonatology and other pediatric subspecialties. Sheridan, its subsidiaries and affiliates currently operate in 24 states and employ more than 2,200 providers. Sheridan’s anesthesiology division, established in 1953, has become the leading anesthesia services provider in the country. In addition to physician and allied health services, Sheridan also provides support, training and management in non-clinical areas. Sheridan is recognized by the National Committee for Quality Assurance as a certified physician organization.