Hospitals have an opportunity to improve clinical and financial outcomes by redesigning the way they care for surgical patients and by adopting an integrated, multidisciplinary model of perioperative care.
In a healthcare environment complicated by the ongoing shift of elective and lower-acuity surgical cases to outpatient settings, hospitals are treating a larger share of patients with high-risk, high-cost conditions, making surgical cases a prime target for any hospital looking to improve clinical outcomes, enhance patient satisfaction, and increase efficiency.
The majority of hospitals spend approximately 50 to 60 percent of their annual budgets supporting perioperative services—that is, the care of surgical patients before, during, and after their procedures—and these cases also account for up to 60 percent of a hospital’s operating margin.a Therefore, maintaining surgical volumes can be a make-or-break proposition for many facilities.
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