Our Orthopedic Service Line strives to ensure that every patient experience is coordinated and managed from diagnosis to surgery, rehabilitation and post-acute care through our multitude of affiliated specialists. We continuously are working with physicians to optimize the continuum of care through our Joint Center Nurse Navigators. These Navigators are experienced orthopedic nurses who help our joint replacement patients and their families by providing direction of care throughout the joint replacement journey. This is a complimentary service provided to all joint replacement patients. By streamlining the process, we help to ensure that our patients receive care that is coordinated from the initial consult to post-surgery services, such as pain management and rehabilitation.
By improving communication and collaboration amongst providers, Memorial Hermann Orthopedics has improved care for our fragility fracture patients as well as our same-day joint procedure patients. By coordinating treatment before, during and after procedures, we are able to improve efficiency and patient outcomes.
The 30-day Hospital readmission rate is widely used as a surrogate measure of health care quality by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Total joint replacements are high-volume and high-cost procedures that should be monitored for cost and quality control.
The 30-day hospital readmission is an adverse outcome related to complications, which can be mitigated by identifying associated risk factors. Memorial Hermann aimed to identify patient-related characteristics associated with unplanned 30-day readmissions following total knee arthroplasty (TKA)/ total hip arthroplasty (THA) and to determine best practices to alleviate the risk factors.
Memorial Hermann has been successful in reducing the readmission rate for THA/TKA from 2.07% in 2019 to 1.39% in 2022.