Optimizing preoperative requirements for outpatient cataract surgery at the Royal Alexandra Hospital

Based on the literature, best practice guidelines, and a cost analysis, it was decided that patients undergoing routine cataract surgery in Edmonton Zone Hospitals under regional anaesthesia would no longer require physician history and physicals and ECGs. Elimination of the preoperative requirements for all but select high-risk patients meant that 100% of patients who arrived for cataract surgery would not have outstanding presurgery requirements.