Shorter hospital stays after surgery lead to fewer complications and better outcomes. Hospitals are places for people who are sick; home is where people can recover on their own turf, often with the care and comfort of loved ones, and get back to their daily lives as quickly as possible.
How Mayo Clinic Got Buy-In for a Plan to Reduce Hospital Stays
Shorter hospital stays after surgery lead to fewer complications and better outcomes. Hospitals are places for people who are sick; home is where people can recover on their own turf, often with the care and comfort of loved ones, and get back to their daily lives as quickly as possible. Building a faster pathway home requires every member of the health care team to work together with more efficient protocols and new approaches to care. Toward that end, Mayo Clinic’s colorectal surgery practice created an Enhanced Recovery Pathway (ERP) a decade ago, which achieved our goals while improving patient satisfaction and reducing costs. These process improvements then gained acceptance in many of Mayo Clinic’s other surgical departments. More recently, some independent medical centers that are members of the Mayo Clinic Care Network also have adopted the ERP. In this article, the author shares how the buy-in of surgical clinicians at both Mayo Clinic and the independent medical centers was secured.