Study: Higher Total Knee Replacement Volume Linked to Fewer Complications.

Study: Higher Total Knee Replacement Volume Linked to Fewer Complications

Written by  Sabrina Rodak | May 10, 2012

Surgeons who performed more total knee replacements tended to have shorter lengths of stay, shorter operating times and fewer complications compared with surgeons who performed fewer knee replacements, according to a study in Health Affairs.

Five hospitals under the High Value Healthcare Collaborative, a consortium of health systems, used administrative data to study differences in their delivery of primary total knee replacements. They found significant variation in surgery times, hospital lengths of stay, discharge dispositions, and in-hospital complication rates.

In addition to the association of higher case load with lower surgery times, lengths of stay and complication rates, the hospitals found several practices that were associated with better outcomes. Hospitals with the lowest in-hospital complication rate had an outpatient preoperative approach that used a multispecialty evaluation of the patient and used a multidisciplinary inpatient comanagement approach. The hospital with the shortest operating time was the only hospital that used a dedicated operating room team for total knee replacements.

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