Advances in surgical techniques have dramatically improved outcomes in total joint arthroplasty (TJA). But as clinical protocols continue to evolve, many orthopedic leaders are asking a broader question: what else influences how patients experience recovery?
South Bend Orthopaedics (SBO), one of the nation’s leading orthopedic practices, turned its attention to an often underexplored factor in joint replacement outcomes: perioperative nutrition. By pairing a structured nutrition program with patient-reported outcomes (PROs), the SBO team sought to better understand how nutrition impacts patient satisfaction and perceived recovery following surgery.
To do that at scale, they partnered with PatientIQ.
Why Nutrition Became a Focus for Joint Replacement Care
While surgical techniques for joint replacement continued to advance, the SBO team recognized that optimization around surgery extends beyond the operating room.
Perioperative nutrition refers to targeted nutritional strategies before, during, and after surgery that are designed to support healing, muscle health, and recovery. This can include preoperative carbohydrate loading, postoperative protein supplementation, and other evidence-based interventions aimed at improving surgical readiness and the recovery experience.
To support the study, SBO needed a way to:
- Track patient participation in a structured perioperative nutrition program
- Understand how patients perceived the impact of nutrition on their recovery
- Collect and manage patient-reported data in a consistent, research-grade way
Answering these questions required more than anecdotal feedback. It required a scalable approach to patient-reported outcomes collection.
Introducing ENROUTE® and the Need for Structured Evaluation
As part of this effort, SBO studied the adoption and acceptability of ENROUTE®, a clinically designed perioperative nutrition program. ENROUTE® delivers evidence-based formulas tailored to support patients before and after surgery, addressing nutrition risk factors preoperatively and supporting wound healing and recovery postoperatively.
Rather than treating nutrition as an optional add-on, SBO wanted to evaluate it as a measurable component of the care journey. That meant understanding not just whether patients received nutritional guidance, but whether they engaged with the program, completed it, and believed it contributed to their recovery.
Turning Patient Experience Into Research-Grade Data
To support this prospective study, SBO leveraged PatientIQ as the centralized platform for both patient engagement and PRO collection.
Using PatientIQ, SBO surgeons recommended ENROUTE® to eligible joint replacement patients through automated communication pathways. This ensured patients received the right information at the right time, without adding manual work for care teams.
The SBO research team then built a custom questionnaire within PatientIQ to capture key aspects of the patient experience, including:
- Participation in the nutrition program
- Satisfaction with the intervention
- Perceived impact on recovery
- Barriers to participation, such as cost or timing
PatientIQ’s flexible survey tools and EHR-integrated workflows allowed SBO to deploy these questionnaires digitally at appropriate pre- and post-operative intervals. Automated reminders helped drive strong response rates, while real-time dashboards made it easy to monitor results as the study progressed.
Because PatientIQ de-identifies and structures data natively, the SBO team could export analytics for further statistical evaluation and publication with confidence.
What Patient-Reported Data Revealed
The study, now published in Frontiers in Health Services, included more than 200 patients who consented to participate, with over 100 enrolling in the perioperative nutrition program.
Rather than focusing solely on clinical endpoints, SBO prioritized the patient perspective. Patient-reported data offered insight into satisfaction, perceived benefit, and real-world feasibility, all of which are critical when evaluating whether a new intervention should be scaled.
The results showed strong patient engagement and positive sentiment toward the nutrition program, reinforcing the importance of listening to patients as part of recovery optimization.
“By listening to our patients through outcomes data, and optimizing their health through nutrition, we’re able to elevate not just surgical technique, but the whole healing journey.”
— Derek Yocum, PhD, Research Director at South Bend Orthopaedics
Why This Approach Matters
This study highlights a broader shift in orthopedic care. As practices look to improve outcomes and patient experience, success increasingly depends on understanding how patients perceive their recovery, not just how it looks clinically.
By pairing perioperative nutrition with robust PRO collection, SBO demonstrated how patient-reported data can be used to evaluate new care pathways, generate publishable insights, and inform future iterations of care delivery.
Just as importantly, the study shows that research of this caliber does not require burdensome manual workflows. With the right infrastructure, practices can embed research into routine care and learn directly from their own patient populations.
Explore the Full Case Study
This blog offers a high-level look at how South Bend Orthopaedics studied perioperative nutrition and patient experience in joint replacement care. The full case study dives deeper into the study design, patient-reported findings, and how PatientIQ supported this research from enrollment through analysis.
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