If it means improved results and faster recovery, patients are willing to look beyond their communities and travel for surgery. Traditional joint replacement is very reliable, with success rates over 90 percent at 18-20 years.
But patients want more. They want to recover quickly and avoid hospitalization, painful rehabilitation, and narcotic pain relievers. “To get those benefits, patients will fly across the country—even to another country—for access to an outpatient program like the SwiftPath Program,” says Craig McAllister, SwiftPath’s President, and CMO. In addition to patients located nearby, Dr. McAllister, based in Kirkland, Washington, is also seeing patients from Canada and other states. “It is SwiftPath’s patient engagement and optimization model for enhanced recovery that makes this possible,” according to Dr. McAllister.
SwiftPath provides information technology tools and patient education programs for joint replacement care in an outpatient and early discharge setting and was named one of Healthcare Tech Outlook’s “Top 10 Patient Engagement Solution Providers—2017” in December. “SwiftPath’s cloud-based surgeon-centric platform supports home monitoring and provides real-time access to patient-reported outcomes, enabling surgeons to make quick decisions and steer clear of complications,” Dr. McAllister says. The platform also empowers patients and their caregivers to take an active role in the decisions and management of care. Roles are defined for patients, caregivers and the medical team—and expectations are clearly established; which is critical for all patients, but especially for those coming from another region.
In addition to patient engagement, the use of minimally invasive techniques and multimodal pain management are also key components of SwiftPath’s ability to support outpatients who travel for surgery. “Minimally invasive surgery results in decreased blood loss, reduced pain and speedier recovery, says Dr. McAllister. “Multimodal pain management combines two or more medications that act together in different parts of the body to decrease inflammation, swelling, and pain—and decrease the need for narcotics.”
SwiftPath is further enhancing patient engagement and access to care for patients who will travel for surgery by establishing online JointCamps and delivering telehealth solutions so that patients can participate in pre- and post-op consultation and education programs from home.
“The SwiftPath program has been so effective that now the majority of my hip and knee replacements can be done as outpatient procedures, says Dr. McAllister, “allowing patients to travel for their surgeries but prepare for and recover from surgery in the comfort of their homes.”
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