The Perioperative Surgical Home (PSH) Model of Care
The Problem:
Too often, perioperative care plans are variable and fragmented. The surgical-need decision often disconnects patients from their typical medical care. Surgical patients may experience lapses in care, duplication of tests and preventable harm. Costs rise, complications occur, physicians and other health care team members are frustrated, and the patient and family endure a lower-quality experience of care.
The Solution:
ASA recognizes that innovation must occur within the patient’s episode of surgical/procedural care, and a new model of perioperative care must be developed in our patient’s best interests. To address such issues, ASA has committed to the
Perioperative Surgical Home (PSH) model of care – A patient-centered, physician-led system of coordinated care striving for better health, better health care and reduced costs of care.
These goals will be met through shared decision-making and seamless continuity of care for the surgical patient, from the decision for surgery through recovery, discharge and beyond. Each patient will receive the right care, at the right place and the right time.
The Role of the Anesthesiologist in the PSH:
Anesthesiologists will need to view becoming perioperative physicians as an expansion of the specialty as we learn to navigate and negotiate in the face of finite, if not decreasing fiscal resources. The PSH model will broaden the anesthesiologist’s scope of practice in order to promote standardization and improve clinical outcomes as we move toward more patient-centered continuity of care throughout the preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative periods.
