ArborMetrix Integrates Groundbreaking Surgical Video Analysis Into Performance Measurement Platform
ANN ARBOR (WWJ) -- ArborMetrix Inc., a provider of real-time healthcare analytics, says it has become the first company to integrate surgical video analysis capabilities into a cloud-based reporting and analytics platform.
Designed for health systems, healthcare collaboratives and medical societies, ArborMetrix's innovative surgical video analysis component enables organizations to better train and evaluate surgeons, with the ultimate goal of improving surgery outcomes for patients.
With the ArborMetrix platform, surgeons upload videos of representative cases through a secure portal. The videos are edited down to a procedure's critical components, and then distributed to peer reviewers in the surgeon's specialty. Reviewers then use scientifically validated instruments to rate each video empirically in various aspects of surgical skill. Those scores are benchmarked against the performance of other surgeons and combined with patient outcome measures in ArborMetrix's analytics platform.
"This new platform provides surgeons and healthcare institutions with a practical, reliable tool to measure a surgeon's proficiency," said John D. Birkmeyer, MD, the Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of ArborMetrix. "Combined with longitudinal data on surgeon outcomes, empirical data on a surgeon's technical proficiency is highly predictive of patient complication rates and hospital costs."
Birkmeyer is the lead author of a University of Michigan study published Oct. 10 in the New England Journal of Medicine, titled "Surgery Skill and Complication Rates after Bariatric Surgery." In the study, 20 bariatric surgeons each submitted a video of gastric bypass surgery that was rated on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 indicating the skill expected of a general surgery resident and 5 indicating the skill of a master surgeon.
The study found that the technical skill levels of practicing surgeons varied widely, with ratings from 2.6 to 4.8. Higher skill levels are associated with markedly lower postoperative complication rates. Surgeons who received low skill scores had complication rates of 14.5 percent, compared to 5.2 percent among high-skill surgeons. Their mortality rates were also significantly higher.
Lower skill was also associated with higher costs, including operations that were 40 percent longer. Lower-rated surgeons had much higher rates of unplanned reoperations, readmissions and emergency department visits as well.
"ArborMetrix's surgeon skill ratings dashboards will provide excellent feedback to our surgeons about their performance," said Justin Dimick, M.D., Chief of the Division of Minimally Invasive Surgery at the University of Michigan Health Systems. "Perhaps more importantly, this cool new technology will help surgeons learn from their peers, as well as from their outcomes."
ArborMetrix has already integrated the video surgery analysis capabilities into its cloud-based registry solution for bariatric surgery, and is now actively engaged in rolling it out through its cancer surgery and hernia surgery registries.
ArborMetrix is also partnering with ArborSurgery, a consulting organization aimed at assisting hospitals with surgeon credentialing, peer review and improvement work. Trained reviewers consisting of surgeons from both community practices and academia will use the ArborMetrix surgical video rating platform.
Said Brett Furst, CEO of ArborMetrix: "With video support, our clients can make faster and more informed clinical, staffing and business decisions to improve surgical care. As healthcare moves toward value-based reimbursement, this is a giant leap forward in measuring and improving surgical care."
To see a demonstration video, visit http://bit.ly/1ghL7Uf.
For more information, visit www.arbormetrix.com, email info@arbormetrix.com or call (734) 661-7944, ext. 7008.
