National conversations have shown an emerging large unmet need for high value improvements in perioperative care. A model of enhanced postoperative care for ‘medium-risk’ patients termed Advanced Recovery Room Care, or ARRC, has shown very large benefits in terms of outcome, cost and, with formal Markov cost-effectiveness modelling, large improvements in value – ‘better and cheaper’.
The next step is to better define the optimal group of patients to target. This study will collect data on outcomes and resource across a wide range of co-morbidities and surgeries and apply Markov modelling to identify those patient and surgical groups for which ARRC provides most value. In that, it recognises that efficiency and value are essential domains of quality. It has cost-effectiveness at its core, and primary endpoint, as this provides detailed data on outcomes (with improved outcome as an essential element), but adds cost elements to define value.
Data will initially be collected at Royal Adelaide, but with the aim to grow the database to other hospitals as ARRC units emerge, to create an ARRC network.
Professor Guy Ludbrook, Dr Esrom Leaman, Royal Adelaide Hospital, South Australia;
Professor Michael Grocott, Biomedical Research Centre, University Hospital Southampton, UK.
The project was awarded A$69,843 funding through the ANZCA research grants program for 2024.