A Study on the Development and Application of Korean Medical Critical Pathway of Lumbar Disc Herniation in Four Different Medical Associations

Abstract

Objectives: A critical pathway defines the optimal care process, sequencing and timing of intervention by multi-disciplinary health care teams for a particular diagnosis and procedure. It plays an important role as a cost-effective health care delivery system and a tool for quality control of medical and dental services by means of standardizing medical practices. The aim of this study is to investigate the satisfaction of patients and medical staff after implementation of a critical pathway for Korean medical treatment of lumbar disc herniation in integrative medical. Methods and Results: The pre-critical pathway group included 3 patients who underwent the implementation procedure from October 2020. All three patients have successfully been applied critical pathways during inpatient and outpatient treatment. Additionally, medical staff members were satisfied with the usefulness of the critical pathway. Conclusions: The implementation of critical pathway for the Korean medical treatment with lumbar disc herniation in integrative medical hospital can appraise possible applicability in actual clinical field.

Application of critical pathway of integrative medical service for lumbar herniated nucleus pulposus: A protocol for single-centered prospective observational study

“…To date, CP has been studied in WM [ 12 , 13 ] and KM [ 14 ] for L-HNP, a commonly encountered disease in both WM and KM contributing to the economic burden. Although there have been studies on CP based on collaboration between WM and KM for patients with acute pain after lumbar spine surgery, [ 15 ] there have been no studies on an integrated medical service CP.…”