Shared care in surgery: Practical considerations for surgical leaders.

Morgann Reid,David R Urbach,Husein Moloo,Craig Kuziemsky,Alex Lee,Fady Balaa,Morad Hameed

doi:10.1177/0840470420952485

Abstract

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted limitations in current healthcare systems and needed strategies to increase surgical access. This article presents a team-based integration model that embraces intra-disciplinary collaboration in shared clinical care, professional development, and administrative processes to address this surge in demand for surgical care. Implementing this model will require communicating the rationale for and benefits of shared care, while shifting patient trust to a team of providers. For the individual surgeon, advantages of clinical integration through shared care include decreased burnout and professional isolation, and more efficient transitions into and out of practice. Advantages to the system include greater surgeon availability, streamlined disease site wait lists, and promotion of system efficiency through a centralized distribution of clinical resources. We present a framework to stimulate national dialogue around shared care that will ultimately help overcome system bottlenecks for surgical patients and provide support for health professionals.

Highlights

Surgical leaders will be searching for strategies to navigate the post COVID-19 surge in demand for surgical access.[1]
Surgeons and the systems they work within are strategizing for ways to accommodate the drastic spike in demand for surgical access related to the pandemic
The system architecture must be consistent with its goals

Summary

Introduction

Surgical leaders will be searching for strategies to navigate the post COVID-19 surge in demand for surgical access.[1]. This positions patients well for a single-entry into the healthcare system through disease site wait lists as opposed to surgeon specific wait lists. In a feasible model of team-based shared care, the day-to-day workflow should embed surgeons in each other’s practices such that collaboration is the natural route This organically offers support for the provider and improves workflow efficiency for the system.[20,23,26] This can be achieved by implementing certain mechanisms that facilitate team-based shared care within an SSU (Table 2). Receive patient consent for multiple surgeons, and treatment by the available surgeon

12. Regularly participate in “co-surgery”

Findings

Conclusion