CareAdvantage, Johnson & Johnson Medical’s value-oriented health care initiative, launched numerous pilot programs in June 2017 with various partners. CareAdvantage is designed to improve inter-departmental efficiency within a clinic.
Biosense Webster AdvantageSM Program is one option from CareAdvantage. Vascular conditions are the most common cause of death and the third most common reason for hospitalizations in Switzerland. These conditions include arrhythmias whose most common form is atrial fibrillation. This is when the heart rhythm is disturbed by irregular impulses from the atria. The heart beat becomes ineffective. The consequences are unspecific complaints such as fatigue and palpitations. If not treated, temporary arrhythmias can lead to a more persistent type with a significantly increased risk of strokes and heart failure.
In many cases the temporary atrial fibrillation can be well controlled through an invasive treatment program. As a rule, further treatment steps are required in the mid- to long-term, these being re-interventions. Approximately 35% of patients require a re-intervention within a year which leads to significant additional costs for the aftercare of the patients.1 For the patient and their caregivers this means a further minimally invasive heart operation and all the accompanying fear, worries and circumstances.
The latest product from Biosense Webster, Inc. - a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson Medical - enables the proven reduction of the re-intervention rate to approximately 10%.2, 3 The clinical facts concerning this innovative product solution are so convincing that we are able to offer a unique sharing of risks through the Biosense Webster AdvantageSM-Program: We provide compensation should the target re-intervention rate be exceeded when the required product portfolio has been applied correctly. Both individual patients and the general health care system benefit from optimal treatment quality at minimized costs and with lower case numbers.
Press release Hôpital de La Tour can be found here.
In practice both product innovation and shared responsibility create significant cost reductions, better patient outcomes and higher patient satisfaction.
Johnson & Johnson Medical is constantly expanding its portfolio of services and solution programs to implement value-oriented health principles. Specialized teams and innovative, high-quality, long-term proven products form the basis of their cooperative commitment to health care facilities in Switzerland. Our partnerships work symbiotically with the needs of the institutions to sustainably achieve more for their patients.
References:
1 Kuck, Karl-Heinz; Brugada, Josep; Fürnkranz, Alexander; Metzner, Andreas; Ouyang, Feifan; Chun, KR Julian; Elvan, Arif; Arentz, Thomas; Bestehorn, Kurt; Pocock, Stuart J; Albenque, Jean-Paul; Tondo, Claudio; FIRE AND ICE Investigators; (2016) Cryoballoon or Radiofrequency Ablation for Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation. The New England journal of medicine, 374 (23). pp. 2235-2245 https://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/id/eprint/2535708/.
2 Evaluation of a strategy aiming to enclose the pulmonary veins with contiguous and optimized radiofrequency in paroxysmal atrial fibrillation. A pilot study. Taghji P, El Haddad M, Phlips T, Wolf M, Kencht S, Vandekerckhove Y, Tavernier R, Nagakawa H, Duytschaever M; J Am Coll cardiol EP 2017 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacep.2017.06.023 )
3 Reproducibility of pulmonary vein isolation guided by the ablation index: 1-year outcome of the AIR registry. Stable G, et al. J Cardiovasc Electrophysiol. 2020. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32369225/