Demand 21st Century Surgery with Healthcare Advocacy

It sounded like a miracle, but it wasn’t — it was a result of sound healthcare advocacy on behalf of a patient.

One day after undergoing a colorectal operation to remove cancer, the patient was up and about and asking to go home.

Don’t let your employees, your plans, or your patients suffer through second-rate surgeries. Schedule a demo

The next day, another patient with a different surgeon experienced a more typical result from a similar procedure. He left with a large surgical wound, a pile of opioid pain medication, a longer recovery period and increased healthcare costs.

What A Difference Healthcare Advocacy Makes

The difference? The first patient had received care according to the ERAS Protocol thanks to healthcare advocacy services. However, the second patient had received the decades-old approach to surgery.

What if these patients understood they had just played the lottery?

The one that received the ERAS protocol, won. The other, unfortunately, didn’t.

In fact, those patients experienced a difficult truth in the American healthcare system: not all surgeons offer the same surgery experience. Unfortunately, patients, healthcare payers, and employers are paying for it in more ways than one. Healthcare advocacy can help.

ERAS Protocol & Healthcare Advocacy

Enhanced Recovery first emerged in Europe over a decade ago. Since then, thousands of journal articles have been published enumerating the benefits to this approach across nearly every procedure type. Powerful healthcare advocacy services can ensure a patient enjoys this approach.

It can include interventions before, during and after surgery and can include minimally-invasive surgery. ERAS protocol represents the entire surgical experience reimagined with patients and their recovery front and center.

Patients who enjoy ERAS protocol-based care demonstrate:

  • 30 percent shorter hospital stays
  • 50 percent fewer complications
  • 90 percent reduced opioid use
  • Thousands of dollars in savings per surgery
  • Faster return to work after surgery

The ERAS protocol is the rare initiative in healthcare that satisfies the entirety of the so-called Quadruple Aim:

  1. Better patient outcomes
  2. Lower healthcare costs
  3. Improved patient experience
  4. Improved provider experience

In addition to the improved patient experience, the ERAS protocol makes it easier for companies to pay for employee health care benefits. It also reduces absenteeism at work and lowers the size of workers comp and disability claims and more.

Solving the Opioid Crises With Surgery

Not only that, but at a time when our society desperately needs solutions to the opioid crisis, ERAS protocols provide it. In fact, it changes the paradigm entirely by changing the nature of surgical pain.

Surgeons, anesthesiologists and surgical teams have come together across disciplines to implement these care pathways in countries around the world, including the United States. But they have not done so consistently. As the writer William Gibson once said, “The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed.”

No wonder our clients are employing healthcare advocacy solutions to ensure their patients get the benefit of ERAS protocols.

Enhanced Surgical Journeys, Technology, and More

Inspired by the potential for these clinically-validated surgical pathways to transform healthcare, we founded Goldfinch Health. Our charge: Build understanding of and demand for this 21st Century experience in surgery and recovery among consumers and healthcare payers.

Put more simply: Remove the “I wish I had known” from surgery.

When you or someone you know, a loved one or employee, faces surgery, ask questions about the ERAS protocol. We have created a surgery worksheet to guide this conversation. Do some healthcare advocacy of your own. And don’t hesitate to seek a second opinion.

We all deserve better than playing the lottery when it comes to something as important as our health.