Interview: Zeev Kain on Benefits of Perioperative Surgical Home

The Perioperative Surgical Home (PSH) is an effective clinical care delivery model that reduces medical costs, improves patient satisfaction and enhances clinical quality, according to Zeev Kain, MD, professor and chair, Associate Dean for Clinical Operations at the University of California, Irvine.

There is currently a huge variability and lack of communication among surgical care providers, according to Dr. Kain, who presented two talks on PSH during the 2015 Regional Anesthesiology and Acute Pain Medicine annual meeting.

“There is no communication between people,” he said. “Patient shows up with diabetes, he may be treated one way. Next patient shows up with diabetes, they will be treated a second way.”

PSH addresses the need for coordinated care between the intraoperative and postoperative periods, according to Dr. Kain. It begins from the minute a patient decides to undergo surgery until 30 days after discharge, and involves all the departments in a hospital.

“Typically we think about the doctors and the nurses,” Dr. Kain said. “To achieve this level of coordination, we really need to have IT, you need to have nutrition, you need to have the blood bank, you need to have decision support.”

The PSH model has been shown to reduce patient length of stay, patient readmission rates and rate for surgical complications, leading to a reduction of costs and greater patient satisfaction, according to Dr. Kain.

“Our Press Ganey scores have soared to 100% as far as ‘Would you recommend this hospital’ and ‘Would you recommend this pain treatment,'” he said.