Parkway Recovery Care Center
Up until now, joint replacement has traditionally been performed in hospitals as inpatient surgeries. It wasn’t that long ago that patients would spend 5-10 days in the hospital after hip and knee replacement surgery! Recently however, improvements in anesthesia techniques, such as nerve blocks and regional anesthesia, combined with much less invasive surgical techniques have shortened hospital length of stays to an average of 1-2 days for most patients.
Building on the model of successful outpatient surgery performed at surgery centers, such as Parkway Surger Center for the past 15-20 years, surgeons are now realizing that many joint replacement patients can have their operations performed in a non-hospital setting safely and comfortably. This requires the co-development of a dedicated surgery center joint replacement program and dedicated luxury recovery suites for comfortable and safe overnight recovery.
Several surgeons, including myself, have completed a three year long collaborative effort with Dignity Healthcare, Parkway Surgery Center and USPI to develop exactly this type of integrated patient and physician focused joint recovery center. There were a number of complex decisions that had to be made in tackling an endeavor like this. It’s been amazing to watch this program come to fruition through the dedicated efforts of all the people involved. I can state with absolute conviction that this program combines everyone’s expertise and and as a result, has created a state-of-the-art center and patient experience.
The philosophy I have used when helping to develop our program can be summarized as “maximizing patient safety and comfort as they recover from hip replacement surgery while providing them the luxurious setting of a boutique hotel."
To summarize a few major differences between inpatient joint replacement at a hospital and outpatient surgery center joint replacement with recovery suite stay.