A Review of Multifaceted Care Approaches for the Prevention and Mitigation of Delirium in Intensive Care Units.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this review is to examine the effectiveness, implementation, and costs of multifaceted care approaches, including care bundles, for the prevention and mitigation of delirium in patients hospitalized in intensive care units (ICUs). DATA SOURCES: A systematic search using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines was conducted utilizing PubMed, EMBASE, and CINAHL. Searches were limited to studies published in English from January 1, 1988, to March 31, 2014. Randomized controlled trials and comparative studies of multifaceted care approaches with the reduction of delirium in ICU patients as an outcome and evaluations of the implementation or cost-effectiveness of these interventions were included. DATA EXTRACTION: Data on study methods including design, cohort size, interventions, and outcomes were abstracted, reviewed, and summarized. Given the variability in study design, populations, and interventions, a qualitative review of findings was conducted. DATA SYNTHESIS: In all, 14 studies met our inclusion criteria: 6 examined outcomes, 5 examined implementation, 2 examined outcomes and implementation, and 1 examined cost-effectiveness. The majority of studies indicated that multifaceted care approaches were associated with improved patient outcomes including reduced incidence and duration of delirium. Additionally, improvements in functional status and reductions in coma and ventilator days, hospital length of stay, and/or mortality rates were observed. Implementation strategies included structured quality improvement approaches with ongoing audit and feedback, multidisciplinary care teams, intensive training, electronic reporting systems, and local support teams. The cost-effectiveness analysis indicated an average reduction of $1000 in hospital costs for patients treated with a multifaceted care approach. CONCLUSION: Although multifaceted care approaches may reduce delirium and improve patient outcomes, greater improvements may be achieved by deploying a comprehensive bundle of care practices including awakening and breathing trials, delirium monitoring and treatment, and early mobility. Further research to address this knowledge gap is essential to providing best care for ICU patients.

A comparison of hospital adverse events identified by three widely used detection methods.

OBJECTIVE: Determine the degree of congruence between several measures of adverse events. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study to assess frequency and type of adverse events identified using a variety of methods. SETTING: Mayo Clinic Rochester hospitals. PARTICIPANTS: All inpatients discharged in 2005 (n = 60 599). INTERVENTIONS: Adverse events were identified through multiple methods: (i) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality-defined patient safety indicators (PSIs) using ICD-9 diagnosis codes from administrative discharge abstracts, (ii) provider-reported events, and (iii) Institute for Healthcare Improvement Global Trigger Tool with physician confirmation. PSIs were adjusted to exclude patient conditions present at admission. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Agreement of identification between methods. RESULTS: About 4% (2401) of hospital discharges had an adverse event identified by at least one method. Around 38% (922) of identified events were provider-reported events. Nearly 43% of provider-reported adverse events were skin integrity events, 23% medication events, 21% falls, 1.8% equipment events and 37% miscellaneous events. Patients with adverse events identified by one method were not usually identified using another method. Only 97 (6.2%) of hospitalizations with a PSI also had a provider-reported event and only 10.5% of provider-reported events had a PSI. CONCLUSIONS: Different detection methods identified different adverse events. Findings are consistent with studies that recommend combining approaches to measure patient safety for internal quality improvement. Potential reported adverse event inconsistencies, low association with documented harm and reporting differences across organizations, however, raise concerns about using these patient safety measures for public reporting and organizational performance comparison.

Effect of premium, copayments, and health status on the choice of health plans.

OBJECTIVE: Explore effects of comorbidity and prior health care utilization on choice of employee health plans with different levels of cost sharing. DATA SOURCES/STUDY SETTING: Mayo Clinic employees in Rochester, Minnesota (MCR) under age 65 in January 2004; N = 20,379. STUDY DESIGN: Assessment of a natural experiment where self-funded medical care benefit options were changed to contain costs within a large medical group practice. Before the change, most employees were enrolled in a plan with first dollar coverage, while 18% had a plan with copays and deductibles. In 2004, 3 existing plans were replaced by 2 new options, one with lower premiums and higher out-of-pocket costs and the other with higher premiums, a lower coinsurance rate, and lower out-of-pocket maximums. DATA COLLECTION/EXTRACTION METHODS: Data on employees were merged across insurance claims, medical records, eligibility files, and employment files for 2003 and 2004. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: As the number of chronic comorbidities among family members increased, the probability of choosing high-premium option also increased. Seventy-two percent of employees with at least 1 family member with comorbidity chose the high-cost option versus 54.7% of employees with no comorbidities. High-premium and low-premium plans seem to subdivide population into discrete risk categories, which may adversely affect the future stability of the insurance plan options. CONCLUSIONS: Various factors affect decision making of employees regarding the choice of plan with different levels of cost-sharing. In a natural experiment setting where all options were redesigned, the health status of employees and their dependents played a very significant role in plan choice.

When should a multicampus hospital be considered a single entity for public reporting on patient safety issues?

OBJECTIVE: Attempts to provide information to consumers about patient safety on specific hospitals have conflicted with organization self-perceptions and led to confusion among the general public. This article presents organizational theory framework and criteria to classify organizations as single versus multiple reporting entities. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS: Operational definitions are presented. A case study comparing institutions both within and across state boundaries in the Mayo Clinic Health System is used to demonstrate their utility. The study includes analysis of an employee survey on employee satisfaction and patient safety climate in 2004 among nurses and physicians at the 2 Mayo Clinic hospitals in Rochester, Minn. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: The criteria for a single organization are more strongly supported for the Mayo Clinic hospitals located in the same city than for hospitals in the same system but separated geographically. Although there is debate about the measurement of organizational culture, employee surveys provide some evidence of a commonality across hospitals in the same city. The case study comparing institutions both within and across state boundaries in the Mayo Clinic Health System demonstrate the utility of the proposed criteria.

Training practitioners in evidence-based chronic disease prevention for global health.

Too often, public health decisions are based on short-term demands rather than long-term research and objectives. Policies and programmes are sometimes developed around anecdotal evidence. The Evidence-Based Public Health (EBPH) programme trains public health practitioners to use a comprehensive, scientific approach when developing and evaluating chronic disease programmes. Begun in 2002, the EBPH programme is an international collaboration. The course is organized in seven parts to teach skills in: 1) assessing a community's needs; 2) quantifying the issue; 3) developing a concise statement of the issue; 4) determining what is known about the issue by reviewing the scientific literature; 5) developing and prioritizing programme and policy options; 6) developing an action plan and implementing interventions; and 7) evaluating the programme or policy. The course takes an applied approach and emphasizes information that is readily available to busy practitioners, relying on experiential learning and includes lectures, practice exercises, and case studies. It focuses n using evidence-based tools and encourages participants to add to the evidence base in areas where intervention knowledge is sparse. Through this training programme, we educated practitioners from 38 countries in 4 continents. This article describes the evolution of the parent course and describes experiences implementing the course in the Russian Federation, Lithuania, and Chile. Lessons learned from replication of the course include the need to build a "critical mass" of public health officials trained in EBPH within each country and the importance of international, collaborative networks. Scientific and technologic advances provide unprecedented opportunities for public health professionals to enhance the practice of EBPH. To take full advantage of new technology and tools and to combat new health challenges, public health practitioners must continually improve their skills.

Competency-based healthcare management education: the Saint Louis University experience.

As a follow up to a school-wide initiative to create a common set of competencies for all degree programs in the Saint Louis University School of Public Health, in January 2000 the Department of Health Management and Policy (HMP, renamed from the Department of Health Administration in 2002) began a process to develop a competency-based curriculum for its Master of Health Administration (MHA) degree program with the goal of establishing a foundation for systematically measuring the learning outcomes of its students as they progressed through the program. This article describes how the department developed a set of competencies most appropriate for graduate training in healthcare management, how it incorporated these into its overall MHA program curriculum and content, and how effective this approach has been in measuring student progress in mastering these competencies over the first two years of this initiative. The problems and challenges encountered during this process are discussed, as are the next steps for effectively using competencies to assess healthcare management program learning outcomes. Our experience provides a model for other healthcare management programs considering using an outcomes approach for curriculum development and assessment.

Predicting persistently high primary care use.

PURPOSE: We wanted to identify risk factors for persistently high use of primary care. METHODS: We analyzed outpatient office visits to practitioners in family medicine, general internal medicine, general pediatrics, and obstetrics for 1997-1999 among patients in a small Midwestern city covered by a fee-for-service insurance plan with no co-payments for physician visits and no requirement for referral to specialty care. Logistic regression was used to predict which patients with 10 or more primary care visits in 1997 would repeat high use in 1998 based on demographic and diagnostic categories (adjusted clinical groups [ACGs]). A confirmatory data set (high primary care use in 1998 persistent into 1999) was used to evaluate the model. RESULTS: Two percent of the 54,074 patients had 10 or more primary care visits in 1997, and of these, almost 19% had 10 or more visits in the next year. Among adults, 4 ambulatory diagnosis groups (ADGs) were simultaneously positive predictors of repeated high primary care visits: unstable chronic medical conditions, see and reassure conditions, minor time-limited psychosocial conditions, and minor signs and symptoms. Meanwhile, pregnancy was negatively associated. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was 0.794 for adults in the developmental data set and 0.752 in the confirmatory data set, indicating a moderately accurate assessment. A satisfactory model was not developed for pediatric patients. CONCLUSIONS: Many persistently high primary care users appear to be overserviced but underserved, with underlying problems not addressed by a medical approach. Some may benefit from psychosocial support, whereas others may be good candidates for disease management interventions.

Quality of care in a low-income consumer-driven health plan: assessment of healthcare effectiveness data information set (HEDIS) scores for secondary prevention.

The passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) may create an estimated 16 million new Medicaid enrollees. This underscores the need to develop innovative strategies to provide efficient care to this population without compromising quality. To address concerns that consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs) and cost sharing discourage individuals from seeking needed care, we examined the Healthcare Effectiveness Data Information Set (HEDIS) measures of secondary prevention for a CDHP offered to uninsured, non-Medicaid eligible adults with incomes under 200% of the federal poverty level and compared them to the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) benchmarks achieved by national Medicaid and commercially insured health plans. Results suggest that the cost-sharing component in the CDHP plan did not deter these low-income enrollees from pursuing or receiving appropriate care when compared to either Medicaid or commercially insured populations. As these results are only descriptive and not statistical measures, further research is needed with comparable populations and more detailed data for hypothesis testing.

Impact of hypoglycemia associated with antihyperglycemic medications on vascular risks in veterans with type 2 diabetes.

OBJECTIVE: Hypoglycemia is associated with failure to show cardiovascular benefit and increased mortality of intensive glycemic control in randomized clinical trials. This retrospective cohort study aimed to examine the impact of hypoglycemia on vascular events in clinical practice. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Patients with type 2 diabetes were identified by ICD-9-CM codes (250.xx except for 250.x1 and 250.x3) between 1 January 2004 and 1 September 2010 from the Veterans Integrated Service Network 16. Index date was defined as the first date of new antihyperglycemic medications (index treatment). Patients with 1-year preindex records of hypoglycemia, cardiovascular, and microvascular diseases were excluded. The hypoglycemia group was identified by ICD-9-CM codes (250.8, 251.0, 251.1, and 251.2) within the index treatment period. A propensity score-matched group was used as control subjects. Cardiovascular events, microvascular complications, and all-cause death were compared using Kaplan-Meier analysis and Cox proportional hazards regression model. RESULTS: Among the unmatched sample (N = 44,261), the hypoglycemia incidence rate was 3.57/100 patient-years. The matched sample (hypoglycemia group: n = 761; control group: n = 761) had a median follow-up of 3.93 years, mean age of 62.6 ± 11.0 years, and preindex HbA(1c) of 10.69 ± 2.61%. The 1-year change in HbA(1c) was similar (hypoglycemia group -0.51 vs. control group -0.32%, P = 0.7244). The hypoglycemia group had significantly higher risks of cardiovascular events (hazard ratio 2.00 [95% CI 1.63-2.44]) and microvascular complications (1.76 [1.46-2.11]) but no statistical mortality difference. Patients with at least two hypoglycemic episodes were at higher risks of vascular events than those with one episode (1.53 [1.10-1.66]). CONCLUSIONS: Hypoglycemia is associated with higher risks of incident vascular events. Patients with hypoglycemia should be monitored closely for vascular events.

Effect of illness severity and comorbidity on patient safety and adverse events.

The objective was to investigate the effect of admission health status on hospital adverse events and added costs. Secondary data were from merged administrative and clinical sources for Mayo Clinic Rochester, Minnesota hospital discharges in 2005 (N = 60,599). This was a retrospective cross-sectional study of the effect of demographics, diagnosis group, comorbidity, and admission illness severity on adverse events, incremental costs, and length of stay (LOS) using the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Patient Safety Indicators and provider-reported events with harm. Estimates are derived from generalized linear models. Admission severity increased the likelihood of all types of adverse events (7.2% per unit acute physiology score for any event); 7 specific comorbidities were associated with increased events and 2 with decreased events. High admission severity increased incremental costs and LOS. Selected comorbidities increased incremental LOS but had no significant effect on incremental costs. Adverse event reporting should incorporate comorbidity and admission severity. Reimbursement incentives to improve patient safety should consider adjustment for admission health status.

Impact of diagnosis-timing indicators on measures of safety, comorbidity, and case mix groupings from administrative data sources.

CONTEXT: Many attempts to identify hospital complications rely on secondary diagnoses from billing data. To be meaningful, diagnosis codes must distinguish between diagnoses after admission and those existing before admission. OBJECTIVE: To assess the influence of diagnoses at admission on patient safety, comorbidity, severity measures, and case mix groupings for Medicare reimbursement. DESIGN: Cross-sectional association of various diagnosis-based clinical and performance measures with and without diagnosis present on admission. SETTING: Hospital discharges from Mayo Clinic Rochester hospitals in 2005 (N = 60,599). PATIENTS: All hospital inpatients including surgical, medical, pediatric, maternity, psychiatric, and rehabilitation patients. About 33% of patients traveled more than 120 miles for care. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Hospital patient safety indicators, comorbidity, severity, and case mix measures with and without diagnoses present at admission. RESULTS: Over 90% of all diagnoses were present at admission whereas 27.1% of all inpatients had a secondary diagnosis coded in-hospital. About one-third of discharges with a safety indicator were flagged because of a diagnosis already present at admission, more likely among referral patients. In contrast, 87% of postoperative hemorrhage, 22% of postoperative hip fractures, and 54% of foreign bodies left in wounds were coded as in-hospital conditions. Severity changes during hospitalization were observed in less than 8% of discharges. Slightly over 3% of discharges were assigned to higher weight diagnosis-related groups based on an in-hospital complication. CONCLUSIONS: In general, many patient safety indicators do not reliably identify adverse hospital events, especially when applied to academic referral centers. Except as noted, conditions recorded after admission have minimal impact on comorbidity and severity measures or on Medicare reimbursement.

Characteristics of physician relocation following Hurricane Katrina.

INTRODUCTION: On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the US Gulf Coast, resulting in the evacuation of >1.5 million people, including nearly 6000 physicians. This article examines the relocation patterns of physicians following the storm, determines the impact that the disaster had on their lives and practices, and identifies lessons learned. METHODS: An Internet-based survey was conducted among licensed physicians reporting addresses within Federal Emergency Management Agency-designated disaster zones in Louisiana and Mississippi. Descriptive data analysis was used to describe respondent characteristics. Multivariate logistic regression was performed to identify the factors associated with physician nonreturn to original practice. For those remaining relocated out of state, bivariate analysis with chi or Fisher exact test was used to determine factors associated with plans to return to original practice. RESULTS: A total of 312 eligible responses were collected. Among disaster zone respondents, 85.6% lived in Louisiana and 14.4% resided in Mississippi before the hurricane struck. By spring 2006, 75.6% (n = 236) of the respondents had returned to their original homes, whereas 24.4% (n = 76) remained displaced. Factors associated with nonreturn to original employment included family or general medicine practice (OR 0.42, 95% CI 0.17-1.04; P = .059) and severe or complete damage to the workplace (OR 0.24, 95% CI 0.13-0.42; P < .001). CONCLUSIONS: A sizeable proportion of physicians remain displaced after Hurricane Katrina, along with a lasting decrease in the number of physicians serving in the areas affected by the disaster. Programs designed to address identified physician needs in the aftermath of the storm may give confidence to displaced physicians to return.

Strategies for more efficient performance through hospital merger.

This article compares the operating performance of merged and non-merged local hospitals during the late 1980s and early 1990s, a period not unlike that being experienced in hospitals today. A matched case-control design is employed to create "synthetically" merged hospitals--to represent them as if they had effected a merger--and compares their performance to a group of similar hospitals that did merge.