Patient Engagement and Satisfaction with Care Navigation Platforms in Spine Surgery

Introduction: Previous studies have shown that care navigation systems (CNS) improve patient satisfaction after spine surgery; however, these studies have a smaller cohort and follow patients for a limited time. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of CareSense, a care navigation and patient education system, on the pre- and post-operative surgical experiences of patients undergoing spine procedures and understand the current usage of digital health platforms with the goal of increasing adoption and improving patient satisfaction.

Methods: 565 patients who underwent cervical and lumbar spinal surgery between 2021 and 2023 were included. Patients had access to the CareSense platform prior to and post-operatively for information and instructions regarding their surgical procedure, communication with the surgical team, outcome surveys, and post-surgery management. Patients were asked to complete a satisfaction survey after their procedure.

Results: Out of 565 patients who were invited to complete the patient satisfaction survey, 120 (20.2%) completed the survey. Out of these patients, 64.2% have previously utilized a computer or phone application for managing their health care. Additionally, 91.7% and 89.2% of patients believed that participating in CNS had no impact on or improved their surgical experience or recovery, respectively. 98.4% of patients that used the patient navigation system were between neutral and very satisfied with the content of notifications, and 96% of patients were between neutral and very satisfied with the number of notifications. Furthermore, 96.7% of patients were between neural and definitely yes when asked if they would use a care navigation system in the future.

Conclusion : These findings suggest that the care navigation system in cervical and thoracic spine surgeries improves patients' surgical experiences and outcomes. They also suggest that patients who have utilized care navigation systems prefer the systems for their future procedures. Further studies exploring increasing patient engagement, response rate, and usage are needed.