Blog: Clear Catheter Systems
Improving patient value in heart surgery with Active Clearance Technology®
The developments in heart surgery over the last 60 years have been extraordinary. Early on simply getting a patient through an open-heart operation was a miracle. Technological advances helped make survival more routine, and over time service lines developed to optimize efficiency and improve outcomes. Costs, however, were a lower priority than growth and profit as heart surgery programs proliferated. Only recently has patient value become a priority for all stakeholders as costs escalate beyond available resources. Patient value is a derivative of superior outcomes per dollar spent. Ideal focus areas to improve patient value are inherent in the processes and problems common to all heart surgery patients. An example is the management of postoperative bleeding, and in particular, the complete evacuation of the shed blood from around the heart and lungs during recovery. Surgeons and nurses noticed that chest tubes used to evacuate blood from around the heart and lungs frequently clotted, leading to retained blood complications. These retained blood complications can make or break the outcomes and is where costs sky rocket when problems occur. Working with practicing surgeons and nurses, our company developed its Active Clearance Technology®to improve patient value after any heart surgery by reducing retained blood complications. The emphasis is to reduce these common and expensive complications by combining a new innovation in surgical drain clearance with best practices and protocols to make this a standard of care for patients recovering from heart surgery.