American journal of medical quality : the official journal of the American College of Medical Quality
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Multicenter Study Observational Study
Quick Sequential [Sepsis-Related] Organ Failure Assessment (qSOFA) and St. John Sepsis Surveillance Agent to Detect Patients at Risk of Sepsis: An Observational Cohort Study.
The 2016 Sepsis-3 guidelines included the Quick Sequential [Sepsis-related] Organ Failure Assessment (qSOFA) tool to identify patients at risk of sepsis. The objective was to compare the utility of qSOFA to the St. John Sepsis Surveillance Agent among patients with suspected infection. ⋯ Time-to-event clinical process modeling also was applied. The St. John Sepsis Surveillance Agent, when compared to qSOFA, activated earlier and was more accurate in predicting patient outcomes; in this regard, qSOFA fell far behind on both objectives.
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Multicenter Study Observational Study
Development of a Quality Improvement Bundle to Reduce Tracheal Intubation-Associated Events in Pediatric ICUs.
Advanced airway management in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) is hazardous, with associated adverse outcomes. This report describes a methodology to develop a bundle to improve quality and safety of tracheal intubations. A prospective observational cohort study was performed with expert consensus opinion of 1715 children undergoing tracheal intubation at 15 PICUs. ⋯ A multidisciplinary quality improvement committee was formed. Workflow analysis of tracheal intubation and pilot testing were performed to develop the Airway Bundle Checklist with 4 parts: (1) risk factor assessment, (2) plan generation, (3) preprocedure time-out to ensure that providers, equipment, and plans are prepared, (4) postprocedure huddle to identify improvement opportunities. The Airway Bundle Checklist developed may lead to improvement in airway management.
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Multicenter Study
The business case for quality: economic analysis of the Michigan Keystone Patient Safety Program in ICUs.
Health care-associated infections affect an estimated 5% of hospitalized patients and represent one of the leading causes of illness and death in the United States. This study calculates the costs and benefits of a patient safety program in intensive care units in 6 hospitals that were part of the Michigan Keystone ICU Patient Safety Program. ⋯ The cost of the intervention is substantially less than estimates of the additional health care costs associated with these infections, which range from $12 208 to $56 167 per infection episode. These results do not take into account the additional effect of the Michigan Keystone program in terms of reducing cases of sepsis or its effects in terms of preventing mortality, improving teamwork, and reducing nurse turnover.
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Door-to-physician time in the emergency department (ED) correlates with patient satisfaction and clinical quality and outcomes. Delays in seeing a provider result in a 3% nationwide rate of patients leaving without being seen (LWBS) after presenting for ED care. Two community hospitals had door-to-physician times of 51 and 47 minutes. ⋯ The change occurred in less than a month and was sustained for 6 months after the study. In addition, the LWBS rates at each facility fell by one third. Basic process improvement strategies borrowed from service industries were used in 2 EDs to improve the door-to-physician process.