With the mission of serving the patient, healthcare providers should, logically, place the patient at the center of the perioperative period.
"Too many times, there's a potential to lose focus of that," says anesthesiologist Adam Blomberg, MD, national education director of Florida-based Sheridan Healthcare's anesthesiology division. "So, we always have to ground ourselves and bring ourselves back for patient safety, patient experience."
And Dr. Blomberg believes standardized care brings an excellent patient experience to life. To enhance the perioperative period, Dr. Blomberg and Sheridan anesthesiologist leaders developed ClearPATh, which includes coordinated pre-admission testing procedures.
Developed in 2014, ClearPATh ensures surgical readiness; scheduling necessary preoperative appointments; delivering patient instructions; and verifying the completion of necessary tests.
With ClearPATh, Dr. Blomberg and his colleagues wanted to highlight the idea of a single patient undergoing a single surgery, as opposed to patients receiving a cookie-cutter pre-op process.
Experiencing the success of ClearPATh, the anesthesiologists extended the model to the entire process.
"We decided to take that preoperative ownership to perioperative, by expanding modules into perioperative modules to help with patient satisfaction outcomes," explains Dr. Blomberg.
Thus, TEMPO came to fruition in 2016, bearing a name that means "a coordinated rhythmic movement."
"It's a coordinated effort when a patient goes to surgery, and there should be a rhythm to it; it should not be sporadic," Dr. Blomberg says.
TEMPO built upon the modules already set in place by ClearPATh, addressing various categories:
• Food and drink
• Postoperative nausea
• Pain modules
• Cardiac management
• Efficiency modules
• Clinical pathways
Two hospitals have already implemented Tempo.
"If you have standardized care with evidence-based medicine practices, you're going to improve outcomes," Dr. Blomberg concludes.