New Whitepaper: How to Implement Digital Care Journeys for Cardiothoracic ERAS

Research suggests that over 30% of patients undergoing cardiothoracic procedures or chronic care journeys surgery can experience anxiety. Meanwhile, providers are tackling high rates of 30-day cardiac surgical readmission, which have been observed to be as high as 12.3% and mortality.

Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) has proven to help combat these challenges as well as get patients back on their feet quicker while shortening hospital stays, reducing surgical complications, and decreasing opioid use. 

However, scaling ERAS programs is often difficult as it demands more from patients and providers – efficient optimization of ERAS programs across a health system requires patients to adhere to comprehensive pre and post-op protocols. Healthcare providers need to deliver standardized patient education, track ERAS compliance consistently, collect ERAS-related Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs), and more.

Digital Patient Engagement in the form of Digital Care Journeys offer a scalable way for providers to streamline the surgical transition process by staying connected with cardiothoracic ERAS patients pre- and post-hospitalization, thereby increasing confidence for earlier discharge, improving patient safety, and reducing readmissions.

For instance, many hospitals and health systems have successfully implemented Digital Care Journeys for Cardiothoracic ERAS, including Baystate Health, which saw a 72% reduction 30-day readmissions and 60% reduction in discharge to SNF, and University Hospitals, which saw a 68% reduction in ED Visits and 59% reduction in phone call volumes.

These platforms engage patients with a mobile or web-enabled, virtual companion; deliver evidence-based, ERAS protocols and/or condition-specific clinical pathways (e.g. open heart surgery, TAVI, TAVR, etc.); monitor and track patient ERAS compliance, symptoms, and recovery progress; automate self-care guidance via smart algorithms and workflows; provide alerts and monitor dashboards to closely monitor at-risk patients and intervene sooner as needed, and more. 

In fact, the Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS®) Cardiac Society, recently published an article in JAMA that recommends using Digital Patient Engagement as one of 22 interventions to deliver standardized ERAS protocols and to collect ERAS-related patient-reported outcomes (e.g. pain, opioid consumption and patient compliance). 

One of the most important decisions you can make is choosing the right vendor partner for your Cardiothoracic ERAS program. The right partner will provide both a proven, effective technology platform and a high-quality professional services team to support your success.

You can access our whitepaper How to Implement Digital Care Journeys for Cardiothoracic Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) to gather strategies and recommendations around choosing and implementing a Digital Care Journey platform.

This whitepaper dives into:

• Key features to look for when picking a Digital Care journey platform and an effective vendor partner, including multiplatform accessibility and caregiver access; out-of-the-box, customizable, ERAS care plans, strong clinical evidence and customer references; Electronic Health Record (EHR) integration; implementation and ongoing advisory services; and more!
• How to assemble your team, including a reference list of the types of stakeholders needed to implement and launch Digital Care Journeys for your CT program, and their roles and responsibilities both during Implementation and after Go-Live.
• Top 3 workflows for enrolling and monitoring patients, including 3 main levels of staff engagement, the pros and cons of each, and tips on how to mix components of the various workflows based on your available resources.
• How to train your staff, launch your program, and educate patients, including example talk-tracks that other healthcare organizations use to introduce Cardiothoracic ERAS Digital Care Journeys to their patients, strategies to enroll a patient on the platform backend, and tips on how to manage alerts and monitor patient status on dashboards (as needed)
• What to do after go-live for ongoing and long term success, and more!

At a time when safety, quality, and innovation are more mission-critical than ever before, Digital Care Journeys for Cardiothoracic ERAS offers solace with an enhanced patient experience that reduces the total cost of care via fewer cancellations, reduced length of stay, readmissions and ED visits, as discussed in  Baystate Health's 2020 Medical Grand Rounds. When used to its full potential, Digital Care Journeys for Cardiothoracic ERAS empowers providers to make data-driven decisions that pave the way for progress.

Download the whitepaper to discover how to optimize the implementation of Digital Care Journeys to streamline the surgical transition process by staying connected with Cardiothoracic ERAS patients while improving clinical and operational outcomes.

And if you would like to see how the SeamlessMD Digital Care Journey platform can help your team optimize and scale your Cardiothoracic ERAS program, improve patient satisfaction while reducing hospital length of stay, readmissions, and costs – as it has for Cardiothoracic centers such as Baystate, St. Francis Hospital & Heart Center, The Montreal Heart Institute, UAB Medicine, University Hospitals Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute and more – request a demo here or email us at info@seamless.md.

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