Abstract
With reviews of the medical treatment system, changes in social consciousness, and questions about medical treatments, outcome management is becoming the most important issue with which the medical institutions of Japan have to grapple.
Outcome management deals with 4 parameters, namely clinical outcome, customer satisfaction, financial outcome, and length of hospital stay.
The critical path system, taking these 4 parameters into consideration, serves as a very effective tool for clinical management.
This paper describes the effectiveness of outcome management by the critical path system with total knee arthroplasty, and the prospects for critical path use in joint surgery more generally.
