Kristine Slam, MD, FACP, of Central Ohio Surgical Associates, spoke at the Institute for Value-Based Medicine®’s recent event held in partnership with Zangmeister Cancer Center in Columbus, Ohio, on September 14th. Here, she explained the positive impact of choice. An enlightened and enhanced postoperative recovery (EROS) protocol has benefited patients treated for breast cancer.
transcript
What measurable benefits have you observed with the transition to values-based care for breast cancer?
The two that most come to mind for me are the Choosing Wisely campaign and the EROS protocol.
Choosing Wisely actually started in 2012 and is a group of academic societies that have come together primarily to educate not only patients but also physicians about long-standing routine practices that don’t really add much value to patients. did. In the breast cancer world, this actually started with us surgeons not making unnecessary axillary incisions. [or] Order unnecessary tumor markers. Now we are back again with no routine MRIs, no routine sentinel lymph node biopsies in elderly or low-risk patients, and no routine re-excisions for marginal tumor removals. It evolved into continuing education on what not to do. Therefore, judicious selection eliminated both short-term and long-term side effects and economic harm to patients.
The second thing that helps is what’s called EROS protocols, and these are specific to surgical procedures. The EROS protocol is designed to limit length of stay and limit side effects, which is achieved through standardization of surgical procedures. A lot of it has to do with patient preoperative education, which is also based on a great deal of evidence about what works to limit patient problems in the perioperative period.
