Interventional recovery outside the walls of an intensive care environment.

St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital in Houston, Texas, created a cardiology collaborative practice team to review patient flow, to develop and implement process redesign, and to evaluate the effectiveness of the redesign project. The team focused on the recovery of interventional patients outside the critical care or intensive care unit environment. In December 1993, the team opened an interventional cardiology recovery unit on a cardiovascular telemetry floor. One thousand forty-five patients were recovered in this unit in the first year. Complication rates did not change significantly for low-risk patients; patient and family satisfaction scores improved, and the cost per case was reduced by $1,746. The success of the pilot project has become the standard for implementing new programs within the cardiology services.