A descriptive, retrospective cohort study will be conducted to gain insight in the safety of the Rapid Move. The trial will include a group of Rapid Move patients, who were transferred to the Rapid Move after their outpatient surgery and subsequently discharged home. The Rapid Move is a short-stay PACU where patients recover from anaesthesia, are continuously monitored, and prepared for discharge within an hour after surgery.
The Rapid Move, a short-stay PACU unit, was implemented at General Hospital Maria Middelares in Ghent, Belgium. The Rapid Move is designed to alleviate the bottleneck in the day surgery unit. Overcrowding in the PACU, caused by limited space in the day surgery unit, resulted in delays in patient discharge despite patients meeting discharge criteria. The Rapid Move is designed for brief, intensive follow-up care, similar to the PACU, with continuous monitoring and a nurse-to-patient ratio of 2:9. An analysis of the occupancy rate of the PACU and the Rapid Move indicates that, despite overcrowding in the PACU, the Rapid Move is still underutilised. Despite the extensive research on PACU bypassing, to our knowledge, no research has been conducted on the safety of the Rapid Move, a short-stay PACU where patients recover from anaesthesia, are continuously monitored and prepared for discharge within an hour after surgery. The aim of this retrospective cohort study is to gain insight in the safety of the Rapid Move as an alternative postoperative pathway for outpatients. Furthermore, the underutilisation of the Rapid Move, despite the overcrowding of the PACU, has highlighted the need to develop a patient profile of eligible patients for the Rapid Move, with the intention to expand the selection criteria for the Rapid Move and optimise its capacity.
Study Type
OBSERVATIONAL
Enrollment
1,500
A short-stay PACU where patients recover from anaesthesia, are continuously monitored, and prepared for discharge within an hour after surgery.
AZ Maria Middelares
Ghent, Belgium
30-day readmission
The 30-day readmission rate is defined as the number of patients with an unplanned emergency hospital readmission, including emergency department (ED) visits with or without hospital readmission, occurring between the time the patient is discharged from the hospital after their outpatient surgery (index hospital admission) and 30 days after the surgery. An admission to a non-acute care facility is not considered a readmission. A readmission must be clinically related to the index hospital admission. The term 'clinically related' is defined as meaning that the underlying reason for readmission is plausibly related to the care rendered during or immediately following a prior hospital admission. A clinically related readmission may have resulted from the process of care and treatment during the prior admission or from a lack of post-admission follow-up, rather than from events that occurred after the prior admission within a specified readmission time interval that are unrelated to the p
Time frame: Up to 30 days after hospital discharge.
Complications
Readmission reason, classified using the International Classification for Diseases (ICD)-11.
Time frame: Up to 30 days after hospital discharge.
Length of Stay
The time between the arrival at the Rapid Move unit and the time of hospital discharge.
Time frame: Minutes, up to 4 hours.
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