Enhanced recovery after colon surgery in a community hospital system

Enhanced recovery after colon surgery has not been widely adopted in the United States and Europe, despite evidence that postoperative complications and hospital length of stay are decreased.

We sought to evaluate the introduction of a comprehensive care process for enhanced recovery after colon surgery in 8 community hospitals.

A system-wide, surgeon-directed, multidisciplinary committee developed a comprehensive enhanced-care quality-improvement program. Surgeons and operations leaders in each hospital developed the internal structure to implement the process.

Surgeons had the option of entering or not entering patients in the enhanced-care pathway. Other than trauma patients, there were no exclusion criteria.

To limit selection bias, the study population included all patients undergoing colon resections (those entered and not entered in the care process). Length of stay, postoperative days, hospital costs, 30-day readmission rate, and return to surgery for the study population were compared with a 2-year historical baseline.

Forty-two percent of the study population was entered in the enhanced-care process. The average length of stay and the number of postoperative days in the study population decreased by 1.5 (P < .0001) and 1.3 (P < .0001) days. The rate of readmissions and returns to surgery remained stable (P > .05), and the average hospital cost decreased by $1763 (P = .02). Generalized linear regression analysis demonstrated that the enhanced-care process was a more significant variable than was the surgical approach (laparoscopic vs open surgery) in decreasing length of stay.

The degree of compliance with care process elements and the relative contribution of each element of the care process are unknown.

A comprehensive enhanced-care colon surgery care process was successfully introduced in a community hospital system, as indicated by the clinical outcome measures.