Oakhurst, N.J.-based Atlantic Surgical Group Practice Administrator Joy Schwartz, DNP, RN, presented a poster on surgery cancellations and how preoperative phone calls can prevent them, General Surgery News reports.
Dr. Schwartz presented the poster at the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses 2017 Global Surgical Conference & Expo, April 1 to April 5 in Boston.
When looking through surgical schedules at her ASC, Dr. Schwartz found a majority of cancellations were within 72 hours of a procedure. She did a retrospective analysis and found the cancellation rate at her healthcare facility was 20 percent at 36 hours before the procedure.
As a result, she created and implemented a preoperative list of questions to ask a patient via a phone call, three days before a surgery.
Here are the three questions:
1. Do you have a responsible adult to drive you home?
2. Do you understand that you cannot have anything to eat or drink after midnight?
3. Do you have any questions about the procedure, including when and where?
She gathered six weeks of post-intervention data and in that time period, her center only had one cancellation. Dr. Schwartz is in the midst of evaluating yearlong numbers, but she said she has, "seen a marked improvement in patient satisfaction." The most common reason behind cancellations was not having a ride home. Her ASC established a 10-bed short stay unit for patients who had a delayed or unavailable ride to address that.
She said to GSN, "We give every surgical patient a postoperative phone call, and their responses have been great. They get everything in writing a few weeks before their procedure, but they forget it. Then they get a phone call three business days before the surgery and go over everything, and they love that we take the time to do that."