Supporting Perioperative medicine

MyPreOp – supporting the National Perioperative Medicine programme

MyPreOp is an electronic web hosted preoperative assessment program that a patient completes themselves or with assistance from a member of the administrative team. It contains “branching clinical algorithms” so a person is asked supplementary questions depending on their answer to an initial question.

The person owns their data and chooses to share it with a particular health care organisation. MyPreOp supports the objective of the POM programme by:-

• Being started early in the patient’s pathway, potentially by the GP
• Gathering detailed information from the person in a consistent fashion
• Allowing a registered nurse to rapidly review the data
• Making the preoperative assessment process for the majority quicker and cheaper
• Identifying the higher risk patients rapidly for face to face assessment
• Suggesting which preoperative investigations the preop nurse should consider
• Collecting initial data to support risk scoring and outcome prediction
• Providing multiple web links for patients to find relevant information

In addition, if the preoperative assessment process is started at the point of referral, it is possible for GPs to refer direct to the multi-disciplinary Perioperative team who can assess the mortality and morbidity risk of a proposed procedure. This can then be discussed with the patient to allow “shared decision making – patients being given a stronger voice in decisions and ‘choosing wisely’”. A well informed person may choose not to undergo very high risk surgery if the risks and benefits have been carefully determined and discussed with the patient.

MyPreOp is uniquely positioned to support the initial assessment of patients for surgery and provide information for the patient about surgery, anaesthesia and enhanced recovery programme. By rapidly screening and preoperatively assessing low risk patients, the available resources can be focused on the higher risk patients. MyPreOp can deliver this in a cost efficient manner to improve overall patient care.

References
Royal College of Anaesthetists – Perioperative Medicine
http://www.rcoa.ac.uk/perioperativemedicine