Patient Education, Discharge Planning Makes Two-Day Discharge After Arthroplasty Possible

A multi-disciplinary program implemented two years ago in an Ontario hospital allows patients to be discharged from an ambulatory hospital two days after hip or knee replacement surgery, according to a Pain Medicine News report.

Physicians implemented the fast-track arthroplasty program at Hotel Dieu Hospital in Ontario in 2009. Hotel Dieu is the local ambulatory care center for Kingston General Hospital. The physicians recently compared patient discharge times and outcomes before and after implementation of the program and found that the program helped reduce average length of stay from 116 to 47 hours.

The program required early patient education and discharge planning, intraoperative local infiltrative analgesia and physiotherapy starting four to six hours after surgery. The physicians selected patients for the program based on criteria associated with improved outcomes.

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