title: The enhanced postoperative care system.
abstract: The perioperative care system is a continuum that includes preoperative patient evaluation, operating room scheduling, the operation itself, and postoperative care. This costly fast-paced system requires its various components to function efficiently and interact effectively. This review explores the interrelation between the operational elements of the enhanced care postoperative care system (intensive care units, intermediate care units, postanesthesia care units, and monitored floor beds) and other perioperative care activities. This care system provides patients with enhanced (from routine floor) nursing and medical care, continuous physiological monitoring, and sophisticated treatments (eg, continuous infusion of vasoactive substances). A management, rather than clinical, approach is used to provide insight into the operations of the perioperative care system so that bottlenecks to patient flow may be identified and eliminated. Emphasis is placed on the need to switch from a "fiefdom" mentality, where each component of the system acts independently and defensively, to systems thinking, in which complex interrelated patterns are identified, analyzed, and optimized.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Medicine, Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem 91120, Israel. charles@hadassah.org.il
authors.forename: Charles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Weissman
mesh_terms: D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D006801:Humans; D007362:Intensive Care Units / Q000458:organization & administration; D009873:Operating Rooms / Q000458:organization & administration; D016528:Postanesthesia Nursing / Q000458:organization & administration; D011182:Postoperative Care