Doctor interaction plays role in heart patient outcomes, study finds

Increased collaboration among doctors could result in better patient outcomes, particularly when treating heart surgery patients, new research finds.

In a study conducted at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, researchers found that heart surgery patients’ survival depended in part on the level of teamwork among their physicians, from surgery preparation to recuperation. The study was published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

Investigators looked at data of 251,000 Americans who had undergone heart bypass surgery and their interactions with the 466,000 doctors who had cared for them.

Results showed that physicians who had worked together before and were familiar with each other’s patient care methods had lower chances of their patients making a trip to the emergency department or hospital, or dying within two months of a heart operation.

“Surgical care is complex, involving multiple providers dispersed across locations over time,” says John Hollingsworth, MD, the lead author of the study and a urologist at the University of Michigan, in a statement from the university. “Our findings show that physician teamwork influences patient outcomes, even more than some measures of comorbid illness.”

The results were based on Medicare data that entailed which physicians treated the same patients 30 days before and 60 days after a surgery and hospitalization.

Outcomes showed that with a 25 percent increase in teamwork among doctors, there were 17 fewer readmissions for every 1,000 patients treated.

“A lot of the focus in improving care is focused on the acute hospitalization for an episode of care. We believe that this focus is too myopic because it ignores the care delivered prior to the hospital stay and after discharge,” Hollingsworth said. “Efforts to improve teamwork, and outcomes, need to consider the entire care continuum.”