TASCS's Annual Infection Prevention Seminar: Keeping Texas Ambulatory Surgery Centers Informed

The Texas Ambulatory Surgery Center Society (TASCS), the only organization dedicated to the representation of ambulatory surgery centers in Texas, holds an annual infection prevention seminar. The latest event was held on September 15, 2023, in Irving, Texas.

To learn how TASCS began holding the seminar, Infection Control Today^® (ICT^®) spoke with Adam Hornback BSN, RN, administrator of North Texas Team Care Surgery Center in Mesquite, Texas, who is one of the infection prevention Chairs and TASCS treasurer; and Lisa Flinn BSN, RN, CNOR, CAIP, quality assurance manager, infection preventionist of Park Hill Surgery Center, Surgical Care Affiliates, in Fort Worth, Texas.

"What we've done as the [TASCS] is trying to take care of our customers, which are Texas [ambulatory service centers],” Hornback told ICT. “We're trying to provide education, legislative efforts, and just overall support for our surgery centers in Texas. One of the things that we found when we do polls…is education is important. Always trying to stay up to date with the latest and greatest of all things, and infection control is obviously one of the most important things for us. So we decided a couple of years ago to start putting on an annual infection control seminar…. And we've had a great turnout, a lot of great information. We bring infection preventionists from all different specialties. We try to hit all the different specialties that we have and give some education to our Texas surgery centers.”

Flinn mentions the presentations she did. One of them was on “survey readiness to help prepare you when you have your [Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care] or [The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations] surveys, what [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] even will be looking for when they come in, they want to know about what your infection preventionists: what kind of background they have, what training they're involved in, how to make sure that regulatory-wise they're compliant on everything, and have all the necessary information and data at their disposal so that when those surveys happen, you can just give them everything and you can breeze right through. As we all know, those surveys are very intense; they're scary. So, the more prepared that you can make your infection preventionist ahead of time, the better it's going to be for them.”