Stryker is making the SurgiCount Promise, a risk-sharing program including a money-back guarantee.
Here are five things to know:
1. The SurgiCount Promise is designed to protect the hospital's SurgiCount-Sponge System with up to $5 million in product liability indemnification and a rebate in the SurgiCount implementation cost.
2. Around 69 percent of all retained surgical items are surgical sponges. There are estimated 11 incidents of surgical sponges left inside patients every day in the United States with an average annual cost of $2.4 billion to the healthcare system.
3. The SurgiCount Safety-Sponge System uses a uniquely identified sponges and towels to provide a precise, real-time count to close the procedure. The traditional manual count procedure relies on a whiteboard that is erased at the end of the procedure while a record of the SurgiCount-verified correct count is maintained in the hospital's SurgiCount 360 software.
4. Stryker offers qualifying hospitals two layers of financial protection through the deal:
• If a patient experiences a retained sponge during a SurgiCount surgery, SurgiCount will pay up to $5 million in legal costs for the provider
• SurgiCount will refund the hospital's incremental implementation cost over its previous sponge spending for up to three years
5. SurgiCount is used in more than 480 hospitals nationwide with nearly 170 million SurgiCount Safety Sponges used in more than 9 million procedures over the past five years.