POSTOPERATIVE REMOTE MONITORING FOLLOWING GASTROINTESTINAL OPERATION
Rejoice F. Ngongoni*, Hester C. Timmerhuis, Amy Y. Li, Taylor Fogel, Jonathan DeLong, Cindy Kin, Monica M. Dua, Brendan Visser
Surgery, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA
Introduction
Unplanned care (readmission and emergency room (ER) visits) is a Center for Medicare Services measure of quality of care. Patients who undergo major gastrointestinal (GI) surgery are at high risk for postoperative complications which lead to unplanned care. We implemented a pilot program of postoperative outpatient monitoring using an FDA-approved wearable biometric monitoring device (BMD) to identify patients who suffered setbacks to mitigate severity of significant complications and to facilitate intervention for minor setbacks so as to prevent unplanned care.
Methods
Adult patients who underwent high-risk GI operations from the colorectal and hepatopancreatobiliary services were prospectively enrolled in a quality improvement remote monitoring project from discharge until 30 days after surgery. The BMD relayed biometric data (temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate, and activity) to a cloud-based monitoring dashboard. Patients with abnormal data (alerts) were contacted and, if necessary, care was escalated to their clinical team. In-hospital death and a home-monitoring period of less than 7 days were exclusion criteria. The primary outcome was rate of avoidance of unplanned care. Secondary outcomes were 30-day ER visit rates, readmission rates, and their associated monitoring device-detection rate.
Results
A total of 129 patients were enrolled but 25 (19.4%) patients were excluded from analysis due to death (n=2) and monitoring <7 days (n=23). Of the 104 patients included in analysis, the average age was 60±13.4 year and 40 (38.5%) patients were female. We contacted 78 (75.0%) patients at least once in response to 192 alerts. In 17 (8.9%) of 192 cases, the setback was managed in the outpatient setting successfully avoiding unplanned care. In 145 (75.5%) cases, escalation was not required and in 37 (19.3%) cases, the patients could not be reached. There were a total of 22 ER visits by 18 (17.3%) patients. Nineteen patients (18.3%) had a total of 24 readmissions of which 5 (20.8%) were direct and not via the ER. BMD alerts resulted in 8 patient (7.7%) escalations that translated to ER visits and/or readmission. In 7 instances (6.7%) gaps in biometric data interfered with our ability to detect setbacks that resulted in unplanned care.
Conclusion
Patients who undergo major gastrointestinal operations can be safely monitored remotely. The technological and logistic complexity of monitoring outpatients are significant and require further optimization. Biometric findings that merit clinical alerts in the postoperative setting require refinement. However, this pilot data suggests remote monitoring has the potential to both reduce unplanned care and assist in detection of clinical deterioration.
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