Q: What is the process West Park Surgery Center has adopted to keep patients informed of their rights and responsibilities prior to their procedure?
Jeannie Pezone: The physicians have their own offices, and their office has all the information a patient needs to know before their surgery, including notice of privacy practices, his or her rights and responsibilities, advance directives, information on the ownership structure of the facility and so on. Our facility makes sure those offices have all that information on hand and that it is sent to the patients. There’s usually a time window of 10 days to a couple weeks between their visit to the physician’s office and the day of their procedure, so they have some time to review everything.
We also do a pre-operation phone call 48-72 hours before the day of the procedure. We make sure during that time that they received the information packet containing their rights and responsibilities, give them an opportunity to ask questions and then request them to bring it back on the day of the procedure. That way they can sign off that they indeed received it and understood it.
Q: How has the pre-op phone call proved to be beneficial for the surgery center and its patients?
JP: In this day and age, especially with the access to Internet, information for patients can be overwhelming and on occasion cause confusion. The pre-op phone call allows us to spend time with the patients to sort through the details of what they can expect on the day of their surgery and the reason why they need to understand that information.
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