Surgeries at the Santa Lucia Hospital Are Weather Dependent
<p style="line-height: 20.7999992370605px;"><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">The Audit of the City of Buenos Aires found that operating rooms are closed when it rains. There is a lack of instrumental equipment, which is sometimes provided by the physicians themselves. However, they shortened delays in strabismus operations, incorporated nurses to the staff, and restarted maintenance, because the schedule of the construction workers no longer coincides with the largest influx of patients.</span></p> <div> </div>
In St. Lucia Ophthalmological Hospital of the City of Buenos Aires, "on rainy days the Ors are closed due to leaky roofs." This is indicated in a report by the Auditor of the City of Buenos Aires (AGCBA, for its acronym in Spanish), which also explains that there are some variables that could influence the performance of surgeries.
The report, released this year on 2008 data, analyzes the changes that occurred in the health center in light of the comments already published on a 2006 audit. The Hospital needed to incorporate "appropriate indicators in relation to the surgeries and production resources;" for the AGCBA, this aspect improved.
However, besides the climate factor, the Audit detected another condition for surgery, the instrumentation; it depends on the doctors themselves: "The surgical instrument boxes are rare, in some cases depending on the contribution of the professionals." Meanwhile, the Hospital also adds that in 2008 there was "a daily average of 14 surgeries in nine operating rooms."
Another observation from the report is that the average non-urgent surgeries for strabismus, including the delay period of preoperative studies, is "one year", an improvement on what was seen in 2006 when the wait time reached two years. However, the work asserts there needs to be an even bigger reduction time. Meanwhile, the Department of Neurosurgery continues to "idle capacity in relation to resources", as of "August 2009, two surgeries were scheduled per week."
Among the "initial improvements" is "the incorporation of nurses." However, in spite of an increase of 22% of workers in this area, there was "an increase of 16% in the annual number of shifts" and it was also verified that the nurses were appointed "administrative tasks".
Finally, the result of the Audit was that "55% -of the recommendations- were successfully improved, 27% are in the process of improvement," and only two have not been resolved in any way.
Improvement
In 2006 it was observed that maintenance in the Hospital "was not performed because the working hours of the construction workers matched the Hospital’s rush hours." The last audit verified that the Santa Lucia Hospital might solve the problem by carrying out the maintenance task "without hindering the normal operation of services."
