Evidence based medicine, and patient follow-up and outcome assessment have become a fact of professional life for a variety of reasons. Having your own data and knowing your procedural outcomes gives the surgeon the power to be able to make sound and clinically based decisions, and communicate with the increasing numbers of stakeholders involved in treating patients today.
- Patients can now log in to web sites and score themselves, and they often arrive armed with information from a broad variety of sources. Assessing outcomes requires more detail than just a patient derived score. Having your own outcomes available enables you to reassure your own patients of their likely outcomes, and explain their scores in the context of their own condition, and the variables that might have affected their outcome.
- Outcome data leads to increased referrals. Having objective and subjective data on your success rates helps secure your reputation in the medical community among both referring doctors and patients.
- The ability to track outcome trends ensures that you’ll be the first to know and can act if there are complications worth reviewing.
- Many insurance companies and practice administrators already collect data on details such as length of stay and complications. Furthermore, that data can be taken out of context and does not provide real insight into complicated procedures or comorbidities which may affect the outcomes. Collecting more detailed data ensures that you can understand and explain the real reasons behind a positive or negative outcome.
- Many orthopaedic devices in common use today have undergone no formal trials, they were listed by the FDA as pre 1976 amendment devices. Most have undergone changes since then which have been accepted as substantial equivalents with no further evidence of efficacy or safety being presented or required. There are many examples of approved devices in Orthopaedics which have failed in general use causing significant morbidity to thousands of patients and cost blow outs to Health Care systems around the world.
- Tracking your outcomes can give you the cost-benefit proof you need for funding new procedures or technologies.
Increasing pressure from patients, hospitals, payers, and a competitive business environment will dictate that the generation of surgeons who are graduating now implement some form of ongoing assessment of their patient outcomes into their routine of patient care.