About Preoperative Care
Why is preoperative care important?
Perioperative stress is a large-scale, complex issue impacting millions of patients per year, but dedicated patient care throughout the surgical process has been shown to greatly reduce that stress. At DIMG, we understand the specific administrative and diagnostic processes surgeons need in order to improve patient outcome. Managing medical illness, assessing operative risk, and responding to complications requires a level of focus that is well recognized as an integral component of overall case management for surgical patients.
Effective perioperative care also requires the detailed electronic documentation perfected at DIMG specifically for surgeons. Our physicians provide comprehensive reports to both patients and surgeons, removing the organizational difficulties faced by non-specialized general practices. It has taken us years to perfect our present perioperative medical clinic, and we remain dedicated to review and revise the care that we provide
- Studies show that peri-operative care with pre-operative clearance before surgery may reduce last minute surgery cancellations by 50%.
- Peri-operative medicine is an integral part of any planned surgery.
- DIMG physicians work as a team. They provide outpatient preoperative evaluations at Methodist Hospital for Surgery.
- If your surgeon requests it, a DIMG physician will see you before your surgery and then each day during your hospital stay.
- DIMG physicians see patients in the hospital 7 days a week.
The Problem
In many cases, patients scheduled for surgery are referred to their primary care physician for preoperative medical clearance. However, most primary care physicians have little to no training in assessing operative cardio-pulmonary risk, or ensuring medical optimization prior to surgery. This practice results in a number of problems including last-minute outpatient surgery cancellations, and poor outcomes. In one recently conducted study on perioperative care, surgeons and anesthesiologists were generally dissatisfied with the primary care practitioners' preoperative assessment and preparation of patients with complex medical problems. The primary care physicians on the other hand were frustrated by the difficulty of trying to perform adequate preoperative evaluation in their clinics with little or no training in perioperative medicine and not enough time.
The Solution
Our physicians reduce the severity of the problems faced by all medical professionals involved in the surgical process. We evaluate each case to minimize last-minute surgery cancellations while providing surgical risk stratification and quick turnaround times for labs, EKG’s, X-ray’s, diagnostic sleep studies and more. Currently our preoperative medical services are utilized by surgeons located at Methodist Hospital for Surgery.