Same Day Discharge After Elective Percutaneous Coronary Intervention

Same-day percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is a reality with modern interventional equipment and pharmaceutical agents. Elective PCI is rarely an inpatient procedure and is now predominantly considered an outpatient procedure. Approaches to safely manage elective patients through same-day PCI have been well described in the literature and demonstrate no safety signal compared with overnight monitoring in the elective patient. With the costs of elective PCI being time dependent in comparison to fixed reimbursement of outpatient care, the efficiencies to bed utilization offered by same-day PCI make this attractive from an efficiency view point. Patient satisfaction improves with same-day discharge. The potential for cost-efficient care can only be maximized if health care providers view this shift to outpatient PCI care as an impetus to improve the whole care process rather than an administrative change with no effect on actual patient care. Same-day PCI is effective and can be integrated into modern health care.