What to Expect
When Dr. Jeffrey Garrett became Director of Arthroplasty at ECU Health, he found a nine-hospital system where joint replacement looked a little different at every site, and sometimes from surgeon to surgeon in the same hospital. Nurse navigators were calling patients and entering PROMs by hand, and many patients had never heard of same-day discharge, at-home PT, or a recovery app.
In this fireside chat recorded in December 2025, Dr. Garrett shares how ECU Health is standardizing care across its system, how he won buy-in through what he calls “patient persistence,” and why the program reached patient engagement in the mid-90s within months.
"We cannot reach everyone and give them the same experience without a digital platform."
— Jeffrey Garrett, MD, Director of Arthroplasty, ECU Health
With mandatory THA/TKA PRO-PM reporting underway and CJR-X set to bring nearly every non-TEAM hospital into a mandatory bundle starting January 2028, ECU Health’s approach is a model for any program that wants to be ready before the mandates arrive.
What you’ll learn:
- How ECU Health is standardizing arthroplasty across nine hospitals and independent surgeon groups
- How to move a digital program through administrators, IT, and committee approvals without burning bridges
- How ECU Health moved PROMs collection from manual phone calls to automated digital capture
- What it takes to engage patients in rural communities who are new to same-day discharge and recovery apps
- Why ECU Health collects data across inpatient, outpatient, and ASC settings as if CMS were already asking for it
- How to scale a great patient experience from three patients a day to nine without adding staff
Who should watch:
- Orthopedic service line leaders and directors of arthroplasty: see how to standardize care pathways across sites and surgeons.
- CMOs, CNOs, and health system executives: learn how digital engagement reduces fragmentation and builds accountability across the episode.
- Quality and quality improvement leaders: see what it takes to replace manual PROMs collection with a sustainable digital process.
- Clinical navigators and care coordinators: learn the workflows that improve patient preparedness and reduce inbound calls.
