Developing critical pathways for the operating room

Case management and managed care systems are emerging in the 1990s as ways to deliver quality, cost effective patient cae. The essential tool of managed care systems is a critical pathway, which is developed through the collaboration of health care team members. The critical pathway is an abbreviated version of the patients hospital course according to his or her medical diagnosis or case type and it allows health care team members to continually evaluate the patients care. It has helped team members at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, identify more effective and cost-efficient ways to deliver patient care.