Patient Engagement & Patient-Reported Outcomes (PROs) highlights from the ERAS USA 2019 Annual Congress

With the literature showing that patient compliance with Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) protocols is correlated with accelerated recovery, leading health systems are leveraging Patient Engagement and Patient-Reported Outcomes (PROs) technology like SeamlessMD as key components for a successful ERAS initiative.

So we were excited to see patient engagement and PRO technology front and center at this year’s ERAS USA annual congress. Here are a few highlights!

Dr. Dan Chu (UAB Medicine) identifies patient engagement and PROs as part of What’s New for ERAS Colorectal

Dr. Chu, Colorectal Surgeon & ERAS Medical Director for UAB, led the “Updates in Colorectal ERAS” section. He started off by stating what’s been proven in ERAS Colorectal: (i) ERAS works (e.g. reduces LOS), (ii) ERAS is cost-effective, and (iii) ERAS compliance auditing is critical.

Dr. Chu went on to identify 3 new areas of advancement in ERAS Colorectal

• ERAS Colorectal Version 4.0 (e.g. pre-op nutrition and anemia screening protocols)
• Improving implementation with technology - including technology for patient engagement, remote monitoring and PROs
• Identifying more benefits (reducing opioids, collecting PROs and addressing disparities)

It was a proud moment to see Dr. Chu highlight UAB’s partnership with SeamlessMD as an example of leveraging patient engagement and PRO technology for ERAS programs. Thanks Dr. Chu for a great talk!

Lacey King (Atrium Health) presents on using SeamlessMD for Patient Engagement & PROs

Lacey King, ERAS Nurse Leader at Atrium Health, presented how Atrium Health has been using SeamlessMD in its Hepatobiliary ERAS program to educate, engage and collect PROs pre-op, in-hospital and post-discharge. Atrium Health also recently published a manuscript their work with SeamlessMD.

Lacy presented how Atrium’s HPB Surgery program enrolled 279 heptaobiliary (HPB) surgery patients with an outstanding 94% activation rate on SeamlessMD. 

Besides using SeamlessMD to send reminders, deliver education and support patients pre and post-op, the team also collected PROs such as:

• ERAS compliance (e.g. pre-op carb loading, post-op early mobilization, etc.)
• QoR validated survey
• PROMIS validated survey
• Post-op opioid use

Lacey highlighted how the Atrium uses SeamlessMD to identify areas of low ERAS patient compliance so front-line staff can focus their quality improvement efforts. 

For example, Atrium used SeamlessMD reports to identify that in the pre-op period, compliance with pre-op carb loading was low while compliance with stopping food/drink was high.

Thanks Lacey for sharing our joint success!

Dr. Michael Watson (Atrium Health) presents on using SeamlessMD to collect PROs and highlight Opioid prescription disparities after HPB surgery

Dr. Michael Watson, General Surgery resident at Atrium Health, presented on insights his team generated by analyzing post-op opioid PROs collected on SeamlessMD for HPB surgery patients. As part of the post-discharge period, HPB surgery patients completed daily “virtual check-ins”, which also involved tracking daily post-discharge opioid use.

Results showed that of the 175 patients who used SeamlessMD:

• 94 (54%) completed at least one PRO on opioid use after discharge
• PRO responses recorded an average total usage of only 36mg for PD, 44mg for Hep, and 35mg for DP
• In contrast, the average actual opiate amount (by OME) prescribed at discharge was 386mg for PD, 365mg for Hep, and 493mg for DP. 
• Of all patients submitting PRO, 46% (43/94) self-reported not using any opioids after discharge, however these same patients were on average prescribed 419mg of OME upon discharge.

Click here to read the Abstract.

Congrats Dr. Watson and team on the fascinating results - we hope these insights can be used to inform safer opioid prescribing practices everywhere.

Keith Murphy (Atrium Health) presents on applying Artificial Intelligence to Surgical Wound photos collected using SeamlessMD to predict SSIs 

Keith Murphy, Sr. Clinical Applications Specialist at Atrium Health, presented early results on how his team used surgical incision photos collected through SeamlessMD to develop an artificial intelligence training model to analyze surgical wound images and provide a predictive output. The goal was to validate the AI model’s ability to predict and classify candidate wound images for early detection of surgical site infections (SSIs).

Click here to read the Abstract.

Congrats Keith and team on the innovative work - we look forward to what’s next as you continue to improve your predictive models!

Interested in learning how ERAS Programs are using Patient Engagement Technology to compliment their ERAS success?

Contact us at info@seamlessmd and we would be happy to share our experiences!