Background and objective:

The age of patients admitted for treatment by Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (OMFS) services is progressively higher, with the associated comorbidity that this entails, and supposes a substantial increase in referrals to the Internal Medicine (IM) services, which do not reach the required effectiveness. An alternative to improve patient care is collaboration between both services through shared care (SC). The objective of this article is to study the repercussion and effect of the use of shared care in Oral and Maxillofacial patients.

Methods:

Retrospective observational study of patients aged ≥ 16 years admitted from 3/12/2017 to 3/12/2019 at OMFS, with SC with IM from 3/12/2018. The variables analyzed are age, sex, type of admission, whether the patient underwent surgery, administrative weight associated with DRG, total number of diagnoses at discharge, Charlson's comorbidity index (HCI), death, urgent readmissions and hospital stay.

Results:

Patients with AC were younger (2.8 years, 95 % confidence interval [95 % CI] 0.1 to 5.6), but with a greater number of diagnoses (0.8, 95 % CI 0.4 to 1.2) and a trend towards higher CIh (0.3; 95 % CI -0.1 to 0.6) and administrative weight (0.04; 95 % CI -0.03 to 0.1 ). When adjusting, we observed that CA reduced the stay in the CMF by 22.7 %, 1 day (CI 95 % -1.8 to -0.3), 40 % the urgent readmissions and 50 % the mortality, both not significant. The decrease in the stay implies a reduction in costs of, at least, € 231,816.7.

Conclusions:

The age of patients admitted for treatment by Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery services is increasingly higher, which is associated with greater comorbidity. The use of shared care with Internal Medicine in the management of patients admitted to Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery is associated with a decrease in stay and costs, in line with what was observed in other surgical services.

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