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Dixie Regional Medical Center

Surgery Services

Health care treatments that offer convenience, quick recovery and lowered costs

Leigh Tillman, 28, slept in her own bed the night of her outpatient gallbladder surgery. Within six days, she was able to stop taking pain medication. And in four weeks, she hiked mountain trails in Glacier National Park.

While not everyone receiving an outpatient surgical procedure can expect to duplicate Tillman's experience, it's representative of a growing trend in health care delivery outpatient services resulting in good outcomes for patients. Outpatient services include same-day surgery, diagnostic tests, lab work, radiology, rehabilitation, psychiatric care, treatment for drug and alcohol problems, community education, home health care, fitness activities and emergency care.

"Whereas, in the past you might have gone into the hospital for three days of diagnostic tests, today those kinds of services can all be performed on an outpatient basis," says Tod Tappert, former executive director of the Society for Ambulatory Care Professionals, a division of the American Hospital Association (AHA).

The common trait of all outpatient procedures: they include a hospital stay of less than 24 hours.

Outpatient visits increasing

Between 1983 and 1993 the number of outpatient visits to hospitals in the United States grew by roughly 75 percent. Community hospitals reported about 367 million outpatient visits in 1993, compared to about 210 million in 1983, according to the AHA.

Today, nearly 90 percent of U.S. community hospitals have formal outpatient programs. Just 10 years ago, the figure was closer to 55 percent, the AHA says.

The rise in outpatient procedures has been fueled by two main factors: improvements in medical technology and a desire to contain costs, Tappert says.

"We're able to do a lot of things using an endoscope," says Suzanne Richins, R.N., president-elect of the Society for Ambulatory Care Professionals. An endoscope is a tubelike viewing device. "Most of the major abdominal surgeries that we used to do in open procedures can now be done endoscopically."

Instead of requiring the larger incisions of traditional surgery, endoscopic procedures are performed through a few small cuts that allow entry of slender surgical tools. There's significantly less post-operative pain and much quicker recoveries.

Lower costs

Shorter hospital stays and quicker recoveries also often mean less expensive health care, says Tappert. If you can provide a service on an outpatient basis, it's better from a cost perspective for the patient, for the insurance company and for the nation, he says.

So in many ways, people who need health care will benefit as hospital outpatient services continue to expand.