Welcome to the MSSIC ERAS toolkit.  Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) protocols reduce postoperative complications, hospital length of stay and overall healthcare costs.  ERAS positively influences patient subjective well-being and put the patient at the center of perioperative management and recovery.  In 2019, MSSIC’s interest in pursuing ERAS as a collaborative-wide initiative piqued and making ERAS a standard of care for every MSSIC site would be necessary to facilitate the maximum clinical and financial gains.

The MSSIC Coordinating Center has created this ERAS toolkit which contains numerous resources, patient education, publications, example protocols and risk assessment tools to support our participating sites.  We have also created a “MSSIC ERAS Patient Video” for sites to incorporate into their pre-surgical patient education.

During Phase I, sites demonstrate multidisciplinary team engagement towards the development of ERAS.  They also document their entire ERAS protocol on the MSSIC ERAS template as well as the standardized process for implementing them.  Additionally, all supporting documents such as patient education, order sets, and risk assessment tools are submitted for review and approval.  Phase 2 of MSSIC ERAS includes the tracking of implementation compliance so that processes can be evaluated and adjusted where needed.  Also, the enhancement of risk assessment and optimization occurs by requiring these key risk assessments with optimization be in place: smoking cessation, glycemic control, opioid risk assessment, and optimization of anemia and/or nutritional assessment.

While the MSSIC ERAS Protocol guideline outlines both required and suggested elements, sites are encouraged to assess the current state at their institution and take into consideration their unique patient population and unique site culture when developing an ERAS protocol. Our hope is that the following tools and resources will assist you in that process.

MSSIC sites have positively impacted the standard of care for spine surgery patients and made remarkable strides with ERAS.  As a result, members of the MSSIC Coordinating Center were interviewed by the ERAS-USA organization.  It is currently live on the ERAS-USA website, and we are excited to share it with you (ERAS- interview with MSSIC).  The hard work and commitment to quality improvement at our MSSIC sites makes this level of success possible.  Individually, we can take steps to improve the standard of care for our local spine surgery patients.  However, together, we are transforming how spine surgery patients are cared for across the state of Michigan and now, nationally.