CONCORD, N.H. (AP) -- New Hampshire's Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center is changing the way it handles knee replacement surgeries based on the results of a data-sharing project aimed at improving health care quality and lowering costs.
The hospital is part of a national collaborative that's analyzing a range of high-volume, high-cost medical procedures and conditions to see which approaches result in the best outcomes and the lowest costs. Its findings on knee replacements were published last week, but several of the health systems already have made changes based on the results.
For example, Dartmouth-Hitchcock is considering having a dedicated team of anesthesiologists, nurses and technicians assigned to knee replacements after seeing that another hospital with such a team had the shortest average operating time, which is associated with fewer complications.
Comments