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Five Hospitals Share Three Secrets to Improve Knee Surgery Outcomes
Dedicated nurses in the OR
It's important for surgeons to be efficient with their time in the operating room, and the study found that experienced surgeons did so. But the organization with the shortest operative times was the only one with a dedicated team of knee replacement surgery nurses. "At most other hospitals, the nurse is in orthopedics one day, in urology the next, and the next day somewhere else. We have to remember that the Honda mechanic fixes it faster than a mechanic who sees a Honda one a year,"Tomek says.
Other procedures are on tap for similar multi-health system analysis, including diabetes, congestive heart failure, depression, spine surgery, labor and delivery, asthma, hip surgery, and bariatric surgery.
The collaborative selected knee replacement surgery to evaluate first because the lifetime risk of knee osteoarthritis is 50%, and because in 2008, total knee replacement inpatient costs exceeded $9 billion, "the highest aggregate cost among the 10 procedures for which demand is growing the fastest," according to the paper.
Each procedure costs somewhere between $20,000 to $25,000 in technical and professional fees, adjusted for geographic variables.
"Between 2005 and 2030, the demand for primary knee arthroplasty in the United States is projected to grow by 673% or 3.48 million procedures annually,” according to the paper.
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Comments are moderated. Please be patient.
SherriCaron (5/29/2012 at 4:57 PM)
I have to agree with most if not everthing in the artical. Having just had both of my Kees' done at the beginning of the year. I have had alot of surgery and found that this has been the easiest of everything. I am a Materials Manager for a ASC and I came back to work in less than 9 weeks. I owe that to the great care I recieved before, during and after surgery. My Surgeon has a great protocol that allowed me to be fully informed and make the transition from Hospital to home to work with ease. I know that I am a rare patient in that I have also been a surgical tech for over 20 years and knew what was involved, but my experience has totally impressed me and those around me. I think if more facilities/surgeons give that kind of care to the "overall" details we would see and increase in patient satifaction surveys and much happy patients in the follow up.