American Society of Anesthesiologists and Premier Inc. Launch Next Generation of Perioperative Surgical Home Learning Collaborative

The PSH is a patient-centered, team-based model of care that helps navigate patients through the entire surgical experience, starting with the decision to have surgery through discharge and beyond. The third iteration of the learning collaborative aims to bring together leading institutions from across the country to share best practices and lessons learned to improve care delivery and optimize the surgical process in an effort to improve the patient experience, elevate physician satisfaction and reduce costs.

“In health care today, institutions and organizations are seeking strategic, systematic processes for transforming care from volume to value,” said ASA President James D. Grant, M.D., M.B.A., FASA. “The first two phases of the collaborative have demonstrated the PSH as an innovative model of care driving meaningful and lasting change in lowering perioperative costs, improving outcomes and experiences for patients. With the third phase, organizations will work together through active collaboration and shared learning to overcome cost and metric challenges they face with Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), merit-based incentive payment systems (MIPS), advanced alternative payment models (APMs) and participating in mandatory or elective bundles for payment.”

With applications due by November 1, 2018, the PSH Learning Collaborative 2020 launched in May 2018 and will operate over a two-year period. Critical access, 340B, military, Veterans’ Affairs, and small or rural hospitals can apply to the PSH Scholarship Program to receive full or partial funding to fund PSH Learning Collaborative participation costs. The PSH Learning Collaborative 2020 runs from May 1, 2018 to April 30, 2020.

The program includes two participation options: 1) the Core Collaborative, designed for those who have recently launched or are in the early stages of launching a PSH pilot; and 2) the Advanced Cohort, which will receive all the benefits of the Core Collaborative, as well as insight into optimizing and/or expanding their PSH pilot with an additional option to incorporate assessments around participating in bundled payment arrangements. Applicants interested in applying can access materials here.

“Since ASA and Premier have launched this initiative, we’ve made significant headway, achieving continuous improvements in the cost and quality of surgical procedures through reduced complications and readmission rates, as well as streamlined operating processes that helps maximize savings,” said Joe Damore, vice president of population health management at Premier. “We look forward to working with the next class of participating health care institutions who have prioritized this important work to advance the surgical field and their transformation to value-based care.” Participants in this collaborative, have improved clinical outcomes in a number of ways:

• A regional medical center was able to reduce readmissions rates by 43 percent.
• A Midwest Academic Center reduced length of stay for admissions related to total joints from 4.6 to 2.1 days.
• A Southeast Community Hospital reduced admissions for orthopedic patients to skilled nursing facilities by 22 percent and admissions to home health by 34 percent.
• Another participant reported a realized savings of $1.5 million in the first year of joining the program, focusing on performance improvement in key areas identified by the PSH program.
• A major health system reduced length of stay for hip and knee arthroplasty from an average of 110 hours to 51 hours.

The American Society of Anesthesiologists

Founded in 1905, the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) is an educational, research and scientific society with more than 52,000 members organized to raise and maintain the standards of the medical practice of anesthesiology. ASA is committed to ensuring physician anesthesiologists evaluate and supervise the medical care of patients before, during and after surgery to provide the highest quality and safest care every patient deserves. For more information on the field of anesthesiology, visit the American Society of Anesthesiologists online at asahq.org. To learn more about the role physician anesthesiologists play in ensuring patient safety, visit asahq.org/WhenSecondsCount. To learn more about the role physician anesthesiologists play in ensuring patient safety, visit asahq.org/WhenSecondsCount. Like ASA on Facebook; follow ASALifeline on Twitter.