Leading Massachusetts Cardiac Center Presents Results Using SeamlessMD for Cardiac Enhanced Recovery After Surgery

NEW ORLEANS, LA, UNITED STATES, November 13, 2018 /EINPresswire.com/ -- On November 8, 2018, at the 2nd Annual ERAS® USA Congress, Dr. Daniel Engelman (President, ERAS® Cardiac Surgery and Medical Director of the Heart, Vascular and Critical Care Units at Baystate Medical Center, Springfield, MA) presented early results for Baystate Health’s use of SeamlessMD’s Optimal Care platform. Baystate Health’s evaluation of the first 60 patients using SeamlessMD compared to a simultaneous matched control group found a 1.1-day reduction in average length of stay, 22% reduction in 30-day readmission rates, and a 25% reduction in discharge to skilled nursing facilities. The enthusiasm and engagement of the audience was significant, demonstrating a global passion for this endeavor.

SeamlessMD’s Optimal Care platform provides a suite of tools for patient engagement, care management, and quality improvement. Baystate Health partnered with SeamlessMD as part of its Cardiac Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) program, one of the first of its kind in North America. Baystate is the first health system in Massachusetts to use the innovative digital platform and is leveraging SeamlessMD’s patient engagement, pathway standardization, and data collection capabilities.

Baystate Health’s Cardiac ERAS program engages patients and care-givers to use evidence-based interventions across the perioperative journey to speed recovery following surgery. Moreover, by leveraging SeamlessMD’s technological infrastructure for educating patients, standardizing hospital’s ERAS pathways, and collecting ERAS compliance data, the team at Baystate engages patients throughout their surgical journey, monitors patients at home, and finds complications earlier.

Patients access the SeamlessMD application on their smartphones, tablets or computers. The app automatically reminds patients to follow the ERAS care plan and allows patients to record Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs), such as recovery milestones (pain scores and mobility levels), warning signs (wound photos) or validated PRO surveys. Additional features include an interactive, evidence-based education library tailored to Baystate Health, to learn what to expect before, during and after surgery.

Providers can receive smart alerts for patients deviating from the care plan or having specific concerns, monitor patients through progress dashboards (e.g. pain scores, wound photos) and access real-time tailored reports on aggregate data for quality improvement (e.g. protocol compliance, PRO surveys, readmissions, and length of stay).

“Cardiac surgical teams are under increasing pressure to provide healthcare value by optimizing outcomes while reducing complications and costs,” said Springfield, MA-based surgeon and ERAS® Cardiac Surgery President, Daniel Engelman, MD. “Informatics platforms such as SeamlessMD can assist in achieving such goals.”

At the American Association for Thoracic Surgery meeting in April 2018, ERAS® Cardiac Surgery presented evidence-based expert consensus statements which outlined best practices for optimal cardiac surgery care. Incorporating SeamlessMD into its ERAS initiative was part of Baystate Health’s strategy to implement the ERAS® Cardiac Surgery recommendation for patient engagement through a digital platform to promote education, compliance, and collection of patient-reported outcome measures.

“This technology has clearly improved our ability to educate our patients both before and after their procedures,” said Cheryl Crisafi MSN, RN, CNL, Nurse Coordinator, Cardiac Surgery Baystate Health Heart & Vascular Program. “The enthusiasm surrounding this platform has translated into rapid implementation of our ERAS pathways. The SeamlessMD Team has also provided us with invaluable post-implementation support.”

“We are thrilled to collaborate with Baystate Health to advance their leadership in patient care and Cardiac ERAS®,” said Joshua Liu, MD, CEO of SeamlessMD. “The incredible outcomes that the team has achieved to date is just the beginning - we look forward to even greater outcomes, better patient experiences and continuing to support the advancement of best-practice surgical care.”

--

SeamlessMD provides the leading Optimal Care platform for health systems to deliver value-based models of care, including Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS®), Perioperative Surgical Home (PSH), prehabilitation, readmissions prevention, bundled payments, and Patient Reported Outcome (PRO) data collection. Research completed by academic medical centers has shown SeamlessMD to reduce hospital length of stay, readmissions, ER visits, and costs. The platform includes tools for Patient Engagement, Care Management, and Quality Improvement. Accessible via smartphone, tablet or computer, the SeamlessMD platform keeps patients on track from preparation through recovery with reminders, video-based education, progress tracking, and PRO data collection. Providers can access real-time dashboards to measure compliance and outcomes, intervene sooner for patients at-risk and drive quality improvement across the organization. For more information, please visit: www.seamless.md.

ERAS® Cardiac Surgery is a non-profit organization with the mission to develop evidence-based expert consensus statements promoting best practice recovery practices. The goal is to provide hospitals better guidance for developing local protocols that are part of a continuous quality improvement (CQI) process for better patient care and a reduction of postoperative complications and costs after cardiothoracic surgery (www.erascardiac.org). Focusing on cardiac surgery, the organization is collaborating with ERAS® (www.erassociety.org), an organization that promotes enhanced recovery in many other surgical specialties worldwide.

Tweets by @ERASCardiac

Alan Sardana
SeamlessMD
+1 800-484-0378
email us here