What do we mean by perioperative care?

We mean integrated care across the full patient pathway before, during and after surgery.

Launched in 2019, the Centre for Perioperative Care (CPOC) is a significantly important vehicle for us to deliver our long-term ambition of integrated care. It’s a collaboration of healthcare professional organisations committed to the promotion and development of perioperative care in the NHS, hosted and majority funded by the RCoA. See who sits on the CPOC Board.

Good perioperative care should improve patient experience of care, including quality of and satisfaction with care and improve health of populations, including returning to home/work and quality of life. It should also reduce the per capita cost of health care through improving value. Read the key to reducing waiting lists.

The challenge

Surgery is an important treatment option for a wide range of acute and chronic diseases. Around 10 million patients undergo a surgical procedure each year and this number will continue to rise. For most patients’ surgery is a success, both in terms of the procedure itself and the care before and afterwards. However, the population is changing and so must our services. There are over 250,000 patients at higher risk from surgery and this number is set to rise. So, with increasing demand and the increasing complexity of surgical procedures, come new challenges that we must address.

The solution

We believe that collaborative and efficient perioperative care is the route to effective and sustainable surgery. Many components of the perioperative care pathway already exist within the NHS. We have previously produced a vision document, Perioperative Medicine: The Pathway to Better Surgical Care, and a film to illustrate what good perioperative care and shared decision making can look like.

Perioperative care isn’t a new concept and aspects of it exist across the NHS. We believe that the time is right to formalise the delivery of this care across the NHS and seek to work with our stakeholders to reach this goal.