The American College of Cardiology has released a new expert consensus decision pathway to provide practical guidance on same-day discharge after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).
“There’s been a lot of interest in people wanting to start these programs, so we thought this is an ideal topic for a consensus pathway that will help programs that want to implement these things — give them kind of a roadmap for how to do that,” writing committee chair Sunil Rao, MD, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, said.
Although the document reviews the evidence supporting same-day discharge much like a guideline, the focus is on implementation, he told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology. It features a checklist of patient- and systems-specific considerations along with key definitions and a series of clinical scenarios showing the rationale for same-day discharge or overnight monitoring.
The checklist can be used for anyone presenting for an elective PCI or for ad hoc cases that flow directly from the diagnostic cath lab and make up about 80% of procedures. It is not applicable for those presenting with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) or non-STEMI, but can be used for staged procedures performed after their index PCI, according to the report, published online January 7 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
When establishing a new same-day discharge program, the basic approach can be distilled down to the “three Ps” — the patient, the procedure, and the program — Rao explained. The patient has to be the right patient, willing to go home that night, and has some kind of support structure at home in case they run into trouble. The procedure itself should be without complications and the recovery unremarkable, with a stable access site and a return to baseline mental status and ambulation. Finally, “this all has to take place in the context of a program with buy-in from the different stakeholders,” he said.
The report points out that the need for administrative buy-in “should not be underestimated” and recommends physician-champions meet with staff administrators to present the data on PCI utility and safety and to communicate the need for staff to complete the checklist.
Implementing the checklist also requires buy-in from nurses and other team members who may be tasked with educating patients on issues like access site complications and ensuring they receive relevant discharge information, a loading dose of a P2Y12 inhibitor, and appropriate prescriptions.
“If you’re only going to observe the patient for 6 hours, you’ve got to make sure that they’re on all the secondary prevention medications and the referral to cardiac rehabilitation takes place,” Rao said. “So I think that in a funny way, the implementation of same-day discharge allows us to actually focus a little bit more on these kinds of postprocedure aspects that I think we were taking for granted a little bit when patients were being observed overnight.”
The checklist is detailed but was designed so it can be tailored to the needs of individual institutions, writing committee member Connie N. Hess, MD, MHS, University of Colorado, Aurora, pointed out.
“At every level there is a lot of variance in institutional resources or even a patient’s resources,” she said. “So we didn’t want to seem too prescriptive.”
Some institutions, for example, may feel strongly that accessibility to a caregiver means someone staying in the house who can monitor the patient’s access site and call 911 if need be, whereas others may define it as having a neighbor who’s easy to reach by phone, Hess noted in an interview.
Exactly when the last patient can be eligible for same-day discharge may also vary between urban and rural settings where patients may drive hours for their care. The built-in flexibility also allows institutions to incorporate their own pre-existing documents into the checklist.
“I don’t think the hospital buy-in is necessarily the hard part because there is a clear monetary benefit as long as you can show that it’s done safely and you’re not harming patients, which I think has been done,” Hess said. “I think then the next level down, you have the provider buy-in and that may be where there might be a little bit more work depending on the pre-existing culture.”
Part of the hesitancy may reflect a generational gap, whereby younger interventionalists who trained in programs with same-day discharge may be more willing to support the checklist.
“This actually parallels radial artery access where data exists on its benefits but it’s not used,” Hess said. “And I think a lot of this has to do with provider comfort levels with sending patients home and just not necessarily knowing how to implement a program at their institution.”
Both Rao and Hess pointed out that uptake of same-day discharge PCI is low in the United States, compared with other part of the world, including the United Kingdom, with estimates at about 16% to 20% of PCIs.
That said, the timing of the new expert consensus document is “fortuitous,” Rao noted. Since work on the document began two years ago, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ greenlit reimbursement for PCI performed in an ambulatory surgical center and the pandemic walloped US hospitals. “I think those two things really do highlight the importance of a document like this.”
“A potential advantage of the same-day discharge program is that you won’t be exposing patients to the hospital setting where COVID is a problem and you’ll keep your beds open for the COVID patients that really do need it,” he said.
The ability to go home without an overnight stay may also encourage some patients to seek care. “Patients with cardiovascular disease really need to understand that you may be stable at one point but then obviously can become unstable, and we don’t want people to stay away from the hospital because they are worried about being admitted,” Rao said.
Rao and Hess report no relevant conflicts of interest. Other committee member disclosures can be found in the report.
J Am Coll Cardiol. Published online January 7, 2021. Full text
Follow Patrice Wendling on Twitter: @pwendl. For more from theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology, join us on Twitter and Facebook.