Joan Rivers and Outpatient Surgery

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/opinion/joan-rivers-and-outpatient-surgery.html

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To the Editor:

In “Settlement Is Reached in Medical Malpractice Lawsuit Over Rivers’s Death” (news article, May 13), it was reported that the attorneys for Joan Rivers’s family said that “the case highlighted the lax oversight at outpatient surgical centers, and that they would be working to advance legislation in Albany to ensure that these clinics operate under the same minimum safety standards as hospitals do.”

Ambulatory surgery centers are already subject to the same type of rigorous government oversight and regulation as hospitals. Equally important, the doctors and nurses who work in these centers have the same education, training and credentials as those who perform surgery in hospitals.

Ms. Rivers’s death was tragic and avoidable — the result of human error. It was not the result of having her procedure in an ambulatory surgery center.

WILLIAM PRENTICE

Alexandria, Va.

The writer is chief executive of the Ambulatory Surgery Center Association.