Patient Follow-up After Tubal Reversal Surgery
Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center Mission
Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center is the only medical facility specifically for tubal ligation reversal surgery. We provide the most detailed information about tubal reversal available from any doctor, hospital, or medical institution. This blog post describes how we are able to do this.
Electronic Patient Database
Keeping track of patients following surgery makes sense from a clinical point of view. Continuing follow-up after surgery helps ensure the best patient care. It also allows us to evaluate the success of tubal reversal surgery and the care we provide. Setting up and maintaining a system for ongoing patient follow-up is not usually found in a private medical practice. It is costly, time-consuming, and requires staff knowledgeable in database management. Despite the cost and time requirements, I have made it a priority because of my commitment to giving patients all of the information they should have to make informed decisions about tubal reversal surgery.
At Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center, we have a computer system where every nurse enters patient information before, during, and after tubal reversal procedures. All 11 of our nurses contact patients, record data, and make daily entries into computerized records. With this follow-up information, I can analyze and report accurate statistical data about the long-term outcomes of the tubal reversal procedures I have performed.
Information Sources
The patient follow-up system consists of information collected in many different ways and includes a minimum of 6 calls or e-mails to every patient in the first year following surgery:
- Post-operative nurse visit the morning after surgery;
- Telephone follow-up on the second postoperative day;
- Telephone follow-up on the third postoperative day;
- E-mail questionnaire at two weeks;
- Telephone contact at 6 months;
- Telephone contact at 12 months.
Other information is collected and recorded any time we communicate with patients post-operatively. These contacts are usually initiated by patients to report pregnancies and the outcomes of pregnancies. When patients report new pregnancies, we request that they complete a Pregnancy Report Form. Each week, we list the new pregnancy results in the Weekly Pregnancy Report Forum of the Tubal Reversal Message Board and also give more details in the Weekly Pregnancy Announcements.
Summary
After reading our information and statistics and comparing it to what might be available from other doctors, we believe patients will recognize that Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center is the only facility where accuracy of information is considered a priority and sharing it with prospective patients is considered a necessity. Providing facts, rather than offering misleading or speculative statements about tubal reversal success, is one mission of our practice. We believe this is the right thing to do.
