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Would You Operate On This Patient? - October 2015 - Subscribe to Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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recovery, such as a patient's body-mass index, medications, pets, or even the weather. They can help to develop workarounds and report the patient's level of complication risk back to the physician ahead of the surgery. • Daily and in-depth. Patients who have been cleared for outpatient joint replacement surgery tend to be healthier patients. On average, the ones we've seen are about 57 years old. But that doesn't mean they won't require the thoroughness of care that inpatient joint patients receive. On the first day of home recovery, our nurses visit twice, once with the physical therapist and once to check in later in the day. After that, both nurse and therapist visit once a day, at differ- ent times, staggering the care to emulate that of a hospital stay. In addition to administering the physician's prescribed care path- ways, our nurses are also collecting data: daily pain scores, whether the patient is constipated or nauseated, the existence of edema. The physical therapists are rating joint function, range of motion and the use of mobility assist devices. These "scorecards" are reported back to the physician, the surgical facility and insurers. Also, the availabili- ty of electronic monitoring devices means that an attention to detail doesn't have to wait for a scheduled visit from the caregiver. Results to report Physicians from all over are intrigued by Dr. Cherry's and Dr. McClellan's same-day joint outcomes. They're the result of a four-part collaboration among anesthesia and their regional cocktail, which stays ahead of the pain; surgeons and their skilled approaches to the hips and knees; advanced implant and instrument technology; and home recovery efforts, which the physicians have credited as a game- changer. Consider this: over a 2-year period, their outpatient joint patients 7 0 O U T P A T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | O C T O B E R 2 0 1 5

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