Heart disease remains a major cause of serious illness and even death worldwide, Singapore is no exception. Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI), also known as “angioplasty with stent placement”, is a treatment for narrowed or blocked arteries supplying blood to the heart, which helps to alleviate problems such as angina (chest pain), breathlessness and fatigue, and more seriously, heart attack.
It has been established internationally that Same Day Discharge (SDD) for patients undergoing elective Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) is a safe care pathway. It does not result in additional adverse outcomes for patients when compared to conventional care pathway (CCP). The conventional care pathway includes an inpatient stay in hospital with overnight observation followed by discharge the following day. The reason why we are adopting the SDD is to reduce the inpatient bed occupancy and to reduce elective PCI procedure wait time for patients. As of 2022, the vast majority of elective PCI cases (more than 90%) in National University Hospital (NUH) are being discharged the following day.
In this initiative, we aim to increase the percentage of patients that are discharged within the same day of elective PCI procedure. This would allow patients to return home earlier and reduces cost for the patients and reduces the hospital’s inpatient occupancy rates. Once implemented, NUH will be the first hospital in Singapore to offer SDD for all elective PCI.
