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Benefits of
Out Sourcing PICC Placements to Nursing Based Services
A nursing based PICC
service is perhaps the most cost-effective and efficient
model for PICC care in the future. Already, there are
several venous access care teams across the country
working exclusively with all types of intravenous access.
Additionally, some nursing teams have more effectively
established PICC insertion practices to exclusively
place, care and educate for all matters relating to
PICCs. Whether hospital based or as an outsourced service,
there are several reasons why.
First, with the rising
number of patients with home based PICCs, nursing teams
are best equipped to deal with home visits and maintain
community support. This is crucial to the success of
any home based program.
Second, nurses are particularly
well-trained to deliver the high levels of cleanliness
and aseptic techniques in their units or patient homes
that minimize infection rate. In comparison, medical
residents and staff doctors in hospitals often run from
one unit to another acting as excellent agents exposing
other patients to various infective bacteria.
Third, if PICC care
packages are outsourced to integrated nursing services,
billing costs would be significantly lower as they would
provide a continuous package of insertion, maintenance
and ongoing therapy, rather than disperse billing into
various groups of professional services which add to
billing costs, time and labour.
Fourth, there is potential
for enhanced working relationships. Current workloads
of medical staff in busy hospitals may result in requests
for PICC placements to radiology or anaesthetic departments.
Often busy areas, PICCs could be postponed or completely
rescheduled due to more urgent procedures which may
take precedence. Typically, many areas must function
as a cohesive unit to complete such a procedure and
include transport, nursing as well as radiology departments
and personnel. Difficulties in scheduling often lead
to conflicts among those areas and potentially result
in poor relationships between them.
Finally, but perhaps
the biggest benefit of outsourcing is expertise, patient
satisfaction and cost effectiveness. A dedicated PICC
insertion nursing team is no different than any specialist.
Knowledge, experience and understanding are all centered
on one subject. As that is their speciality, they are
experts at it. Those that may be classified as difficult
or impossible patients to cannulate are routinely cared
for by them; those situations are not the exception.
Additionally, since being proficient at placement, patients
are cannulated in shorter time, with less discomfort,
and with technique that results in fewer complications.
For the institution, by freeing interventional radiology,
they are able to complete other procedures that may
be more cost effective.
The consumer health information
on this Website is for informational and educational
purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice
or treatment for any medical conditions.
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