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Cost-effectiveness of Clinical Pathway in Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery

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Abstract

Few studies have been devoted to the exploration of the effect of clinical pathways on coronary artery diseases treated with coronary artery bypass (CAB) surgery. This study was aimed to investigate the cost and effectiveness of the clinical pathway on CAB surgery in a medical center. With a retrospective dataset in 2003–2007, 212 CAB surgery patients were included. Data of the costs and postoperative complication occurrence and length of stays were the focus and patient demographics, surgical risk indicator EuroSCORE, surgical conditions were collected. It revealed that there was differentiation across specified cost items in beating heart CAB surgery patients, but not for heart arrest CAB surgery patients with and without clinical pathways enrolled. In addition, there was no difference in postoperative complication occurrence in CAB surgery patients enrolled into clinical pathways. However, robotic beating heart CAB surgery patients enrolled clinical pathways were shown to have less postoperative ordinary ward stay than those not enrolled clinical pathways. CAB surgery patients’ age and surgical risks were related to their postoperative lengths of stay to some extent.

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Acknowledgement

This study was supported by Taichung Veterans General Hospital for provisions of administrative and medical data.

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Correspondence to Blossom Yen-Ju Lin.

Appendices

Appendix 1 Design of clinical pathway for coronary artery bypass surgery in the studied medical center

Part I. Preoperative preparation
Part II. Operation and postoperative pathway

Appendix 2 Criteria excluded from clinical pathways for CAB surgery patients proposed by Bureau of National Health Insurance

   

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Lin, YK., Chen, CP., Tsai, WC. et al. Cost-effectiveness of Clinical Pathway in Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery. J Med Syst 35, 203–213 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-009-9357-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-009-9357-7

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