Why SPY?

SPY Imaging and Improvements in Quality 

A commitment to quality is the cornerstone of every hospital's mission and is at the forefront of the changes that will positively impact the United States healthcare system. In his recent speech to the American Medical Association, President Barack Obama said many things including, "Because our health care system is so complex and medicine is always evolving, we needs a way to continually evaluate how we can eliminate waste, reduce costs and improve quality."

Why is improving quality so important to this issue?  Because improvements in quality healthcare can, if nothing else, reduce costly preventable complications and hospital readmissions. Today, it is reported that nearly 20% of Medicare patients discharged from hospitals, are readmitted within a month, which puts patients at higher risk and drives up the cost of care. 

One of the foremost prinicples in quality is that efficiencies happen when accountability starts at the earliest point, where factual data can be acted upon to produce the best outcome. Achievement of quality is most cost efficient when processes that negatively impact quality are corrected at the the earliest stages. Data on quality clearly shows that the cost of correcting quality is directly proportional to that stage at which the correction occurs; the later the fix the more expensive it is.

For hospitals providing surgical services, this means correcting those issues that may negatively impact outcomes such as non-functioning bypass grafts, poor mastectomy flap perfusion or areas of ischemic bowel, at the time of the initial surgery. Although investing in surgery may appear to increase costs, these improvements can result in fewer complications in the post operative period and over all cost savings for hospitals. In a 2008 publication in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery, Brown et al., reported that 13.4% of Medicare beneficiaries experiencing one complication following heart bypass surgery consumend an average $15,468 more in hospital resources and remained in the hospital 5.3 days longer than those not experiencing complications. This suggests that Medicare patients experiencing only one complication consumed approxiamtely $241 million in additional hospital resources. What the cost data is telling us is that reducing complications and minimizing or eliminating readmissions is where the savings really are.

Before SPY imaging, most surgeons performing heart bypass, breast reconstruction or colorectal surgery had no practical method of obtaining clincally relevant real time images and information upon which to base intra-operative decisions that had the potential to improve the quality of the procedure or reduce the potential for costly post-operative complications. Although x-ray angiography could also contribute to better outcomes, because of practical, safety and expense concerns its use has not been widely adopted in surgery. SPY imaging, which has been shown to correlate to x-ray angiography, eliminates many of the safety and practical concerns associated with imaging in the OR.  

Most importantly, data reported in more than 30 medical journal articles provides compelling evidence that SPY imaging equips surgeons perfoming complex surgeries, such as CABG and breast reconstruction, with a reliable tool for assessing and treating certain clinical parameters that can lead to improvements in complication rates, reoperation and readmission to the hospital. The use of SPY imaging, in Medicare patients undegoing CABG alone, has the potential to save more than $200 Million per year in healthcare costs.