Telehealth for Children With Medical Complexity During the COVID Pandemic: A Qualitative Study Exploring Caregiver Experiences.

Children with medical complexity (CMC) receive care from many clinicians. Our objective is to describe caregivers' experiences about telehealth for CMC. This qualitative study conducted in North Carolina involves semistructured interviews with 23 caregivers of CMC (15 English; 8 Spanish). Data were analyzed using thematic content analysis. Five themes were identified: (1) telehealth allayed caregivers' fears about their children's exposure to COVID-19 and mitigated the challenges with in-person visits during the pandemic. (2) Telehealth reduced the logistical challenges of in-person visits for CMC, enabled providers to see children in their home environment, and prevented appointment cancelations. (3) System inaccessibility, technical problems, and providers' inability to deliver telehealth were challenges. (4) Inadequate evaluation of the child and caregiver-provider communication were limitations. (5) Caregivers were satisfied with telehealth, found variability in telehealth offering, and wished telehealth continued to remain an option. Telehealth is a viable option for outpatient care delivery for CMC.

Lessons From the Northeast COVID-19 Surge: Well-Being of the Health Care Workforce.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on the US health care system which was already experiencing higher levels of personal burnout among health care workers than the average US worker. Well-being efforts to support the workforce have become a critical countermeasure during the pandemic. This work was presented at the Thomas Jefferson University, College of Population Health Seminar Series: Clinical Lessons from the Northeast Surge, COVID-19: Spread the Science, not the Virus, held August 18, 2020. The entire series was held virtually from July 21 to September 29, 2020. The authors describe issues impacting health care workers during this early period of the pandemic with two examples of concrete strategies to approach well-being at the organizational level and lessons learned.

Innovative Wellness Models to Support Advancement and Retention Among Women Physicians.

Despite improvements in representation of women in academic medicine, the rate of promotion and career advancement remains unequal. Compared with their male colleagues, women report lower rates of personal-organizational value alignment and higher rates of burnout. Particular challenges further exist for Black women, Indigenous women, women of color, and third gender or gender nonbinary faculty. Promoting the well-being of women physicians requires innovative approaches beyond the traditional scope of physician well-being efforts and careful attention to the unique barriers women face. Three wellness-oriented models are presented to promote the professional fulfillment and well-being of women physicians: (1) redefine productivity and create innovative work models, (2) promote equity through workplace redesign and burnout reduction, and (3) promote, measure, and improve diversity, equity, and inclusion. By engaging in innovative models for equitable advancement and retention, it is anticipated that diverse groups of women faculty will be better represented at higher levels of leadership and thus contribute to the creation of more equitable work climates, fostering well-being for women physicians.

Assessment of Physician Sleep and Wellness, Burnout, and Clinically Significant Medical Errors.

Importance: Sleep-related impairment in physicians is an occupational hazard associated with long and sometimes unpredictable work hours and may contribute to burnout and self-reported clinically significant medical error. Objective: To assess the associations between sleep-related impairment and occupational wellness indicators in physicians practicing at academic-affiliated medical centers and the association of sleep-related impairment with self-reported clinically significant medical errors, before and after adjusting for burnout. Design, Setting, and Participants: This cross-sectional study used physician wellness survey data collected from 11 academic-affiliated medical centers between November 2016 and October 2018. Analysis was completed in January 2020. A total of 19 384 attending physicians and 7257 house staff physicians at participating institutions were invited to complete a wellness survey. The sample of responders was used for this study. Exposures: Sleep-related impairment. Main Outcomes and Measures: Association between sleep-related impairment and occupational wellness indicators (ie, work exhaustion, interpersonal disengagement, overall burnout, and professional fulfillment) was hypothesized before data collection. Assessment of the associations of sleep-related impairment and burnout with self-reported clinically significant medical errors (ie, error within the last year resulting in patient harm) was planned after data collection. Results: Of all physicians invited to participate in the survey, 7700 of 19 384 attending physicians (40%) and 3695 of 7257 house staff physicians (51%) completed sleep-related impairment items, including 5279 women (46%), 5187 men (46%), and 929 (8%) who self-identified as other gender or elected not to answer. Because of institutional variation in survey domain inclusion, self-reported medical error responses from 7538 physicians were available for analyses. Spearman correlations of sleep-related impairment with interpersonal disengagement (r = 0.51; P < .001), work exhaustion (r = 0.58; P < .001), and overall burnout (r = 0.59; P < .001) were large. Sleep-related impairment correlation with professional fulfillment (r = -0.40; P < .001) was moderate. In a multivariate model adjusted for gender, training status, medical specialty, and burnout level, compared with low sleep-related impairment levels, moderate, high, and very high levels were associated with increased odds of self-reported clinically significant medical error, by 53% (odds ratio, 1.53; 95% CI, 1.12-2.09), 96% (odds ratio, 1.96; 95% CI, 1.46-2.63), and 97% (odds ratio, 1.97; 95% CI, 1.45-2.69), respectively. Conclusions and Relevance: In this study, sleep-related impairment was associated with increased burnout, decreased professional fulfillment, and increased self-reported clinically significant medical error. Interventions to mitigate sleep-related impairment in physicians are warranted.

Supporting Well-being Through the Implementation of Education and a Relaxing Retreat Space.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to determine whether an innovative program including psychoeducation grounded in positive psychology and awareness of cognitive biases, along with access to a dedicated relaxation environment, would lower burnout for nurses. BACKGROUND: Promoting well-being of nurses is an essential goal of healthcare leaders because of the negative effects of burnout out on nurses' health and patient outcomes. METHODS: A prospective cohort analysis was conducted to examine whether exposure to the OASIS (Opportunity to Achieve Staff Inspiration and Strength) education content and using the OASIS rooms were associated with improvements in quality of life or turnover intention among nurses. RESULTS: Nurses who reported receiving 3 to 6 education sessions and who used the OASIS room reported lower levels of burnout, on average, than nurses who did not receive any education sessions. CONCLUSION: The OASIS program has the potential to be an effective, easy-to-deliver education program that can integrate well-being into the workday of nursing professionals.

Organizational strategies to reduce physician burnout and improve professional fulfillment.

Burnout is highly prevalent among physicians and has been associated with negative outcomes for physicians, patients, staff, and health-care organizations. Reducing physician burnout and increasing physician well-being is a priority. Systematic reviews suggest that organization-based interventions are more effective in reducing physician burnout than interventions targeted at individual physicians. This consensus review by leaders in the field across multiple institutions presents emerging trends and exemplary evidence-based strategies to improve professional fulfillment and reduce physician burnout using Stanford's tripartite model of physician professional fulfillment as an organizing framework: practice efficiency, culture, and personal resilience to support physician well-being. These strategies include leadership traits, latitude of control and autonomy, collegiality, diversity, teamwork, top-of-license workflows, electronic health record (EHR) usability, peer support, confidential mental health services, work-life integration and reducing barriers to practicing a healthy lifestyle. The review concludes with evidence-based recommendations on establishing an effective physician wellness program.

Climate research priorities for policy-makers, practitioners, and scientists in Georgia, USA.

Climate change has far-reaching effects on human and ecological systems, requiring collaboration across sectors and disciplines to determine effective responses. To inform regional responses to climate change, decision-makers need credible and relevant information representing a wide swath of knowledge and perspectives. The southeastern U. S. State of Georgia is a valuable focal area for study because it contains multiple ecological zones that vary greatly in land use and economic activities, and it is vulnerable to diverse climate change impacts. We identified 40 important research questions that, if answered, could lay the groundwork for effective, science-based climate action in Georgia. Top research priorities were identified through a broad solicitation of candidate research questions (180 were received). A group of experts across sectors and disciplines gathered for a workshop to categorize, prioritize, and filter the candidate questions, identify missing topics, and rewrite questions. Participants then collectively chose the 40 most important questions. This cross-sectoral effort ensured the inclusion of a diversity of topics and questions (e.g., coastal hazards, agricultural production, ecosystem functioning, urban infrastructure, and human health) likely to be important to Georgia policy-makers, practitioners, and scientists. Several cross-cutting themes emerged, including the need for long-term data collection and consideration of at-risk Georgia citizens and communities. Workshop participants defined effective responses as those that take economic cost, environmental impacts, and social justice into consideration. Our research highlights the importance of collaborators across disciplines and sectors, and discussing challenges and opportunities that will require transdisciplinary solutions.

Emergency Physicians Who Produce Higher Relative Value Units Per Hour Spend Similar Amounts of Time at Patient Bedsides as Their Colleagues.

BACKGROUND: Emergency physicians (EPs) are expected to deliver quality care while maintaining high levels of efficiency and productivity as measured by the relative value unit (RVU). OBJECTIVES: We sought to determine whether academic EPs with higher RVUs spend less time at the bedside than their colleagues. METHODS: This was a prospective, observational, cohort study. A 13-item task list was generated, pilot-tested, and placed onto a computerized tablet. RESULTS: There was no difference among EPs in terms of time spent at bedside, 26.7% of total time, 17.31 min (95% confidence interval [CI] 14.43-20.19), p = 0.052; resident interaction 13.1%, 8.46 min (95% CI 4.68-12.25), p = 0.959; charting, 11.1%, 7.17 min (95% CI .746-5.65), p = 0.055; information search, 10.5%, 6.80 min (95% CI 0.84-8.52), p = 0.320; walking, 9.0%, 5.86 min (95% CI 5.17-6.54), p = 0.112; consultant interaction, 8.2%, 5.28 min (95% CI 3.18-7.40), p = 0.404; writing orders, 6.5%, 4.19 min (95% CI 3.22-5.15), p = 0.109; nursing interaction, 5.6%, 3.65 min (95% CI 2.54-4.76), p = 0.260; other, 5.2%, 3.65 min (95% CI 1.76-5.02), p = 0.785; medical student interaction, 4.2%, 2.75 min (95% CI 0.53-4.97), p = 0.102; physician assistant interaction, 2.8%, 1.79 min (95% CI 1.08-2.50), p = 0.959; clerical interaction, 1.7%, 1.13 min (95% CI .69-1.57), p = 0.335; and electrocardiogram interpretation, 0.7%, 0.45 min (95% CI .32-.58), p = 0.793. CONCLUSIONS: Despite differences in RVU-based productivity data, academic EPs spend similar amounts of time involved in the daily tasks of taking care of patients, underscoring that direct physician-patient interaction is one practice parameter that is not compromised among these EPs.

Treatment of Neuroendocrine Liver Metastases.

Neuroendocrine tumors are rare and slow-growing malignancies that commonly metastasize to the liver, resulting hormonal syndromes and death from liver failure. Surgical consultation and liver debulking are key components in management. Traditional surgical resection guidelines do not apply to these tumors as with other cancers. Surgical resection has shown survival benefit even in the event of an incomplete resection. Ablation may be used as an adjunct to resection or in patients who are not candidates for resection. Asymptomatic patients with high-volume disease do as well with intra-arterial therapy as with surgery.

Surgical Treatment of Small Bowel Neuroendocrine Tumors.

Neuroendocrine tumors of the small bowel are rare, slow-growing malignancies that commonly metastasize to nodes at the root of the mesentery and the liver. Liver metastases are associated with carcinoid syndrome. Mesenteric nodal masses can cause bowel obstruction, intestinal angina, or variceal hemorrhage. Patients die of liver failure or bowel obstruction. Primary resection is associated with improved survival rates. Selected patients may benefit from liver debulking operations. Liver resection has excellent survival rates even in the event of an incomplete resection, as well as improvement in hormonal symptoms. Radiofrequency ablation can help to preserve hepatic parenchyma during resection.

Chief complaint-based performance measures: a new focus for acute care quality measurement.

Performance measures are increasingly important to guide meaningful quality improvement efforts and value-based reimbursement. Populations included in most current hospital performance measures are defined by recorded diagnoses using International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision codes in administrative claims data. Although the diagnosis-centric approach allows the assessment of disease-specific quality, it fails to measure one of the primary functions of emergency department (ED) care, which involves diagnosing, risk stratifying, and treating patients' potentially life-threatening conditions according to symptoms (ie, chief complaints). In this article, we propose chief complaint-based quality measures as a means to enhance the evaluation of quality and value in emergency care. We discuss the potential benefits of chief complaint-based measures, describe opportunities to mitigate challenges, propose an example measure set, and present several recommendations to advance this paradigm in ED-based performance measurement.

Patient satisfaction surveys and quality of care: an information paper.

With passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, payment incentives were created to improve the "value" of health care delivery. Because physicians and physician practices aim to deliver care that is both clinically effective and patient centered, it is important to understand the association between the patient experience and quality health outcomes. Surveys have become a tool with which to quantify the consumer experience. In addition, results of these surveys are playing an increasingly important role in determining hospital payment. Given that the patient experience is being used as a surrogate marker for quality and value of health care delivery, we will review the patient experience-related pay-for-performance programs and effect on emergency medicine, discuss the literature describing the association between quality and the patient-reported experience, and discuss future opportunities for emergency medicine.

Quality and safety implications of emergency department information systems.

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009 and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services "meaningful use" incentive programs, in tandem with the boundless additional requirements for detailed reporting of quality metrics, have galvanized hospital efforts to implement hospital-based electronic health records. As such, emergency department information systems (EDISs) are an important and unique component of most hospitals' electronic health records. System functionality varies greatly and affects physician decisionmaking, clinician workflow, communication, and, ultimately, the overall quality of care and patient safety. This article is a joint effort by members of the Quality Improvement and Patient Safety Section and the Informatics Section of the American College of Emergency Physicians. The aim of this effort is to examine the benefits and potential threats to quality and patient safety that could result from the choice of a particular EDIS, its implementation and optimization, and the hospital's or physician group's approach to continuous improvement of the EDIS. Specifically, we explored the following areas of potential EDIS safety concerns: communication failure, wrong order-wrong patient errors, poor data display, and alert fatigue. Case studies are presented that illustrate the potential harm that could befall patients from an inferior EDIS product or suboptimal execution of such a product in the clinical environment. The authors have developed 7 recommendations to improve patient safety with respect to the deployment of EDISs. These include ensuring that emergency providers actively participate in selection of the EDIS product, in the design of processes related to EDIS implementation and optimization, and in the monitoring of the system's ongoing success or failure. Our recommendations apply to emergency departments using any type of EDIS: custom-developed systems, best-of-breed vendor systems, or enterprise systems.

Benign nuchal rigidity: the emergency department evaluation of acute prevertebral calcific tendonitis.

Acute prevertebral calcific tendonitis (APCT) is a rare condition, the exact incidence of which is unknown. It is of particular interest to the emergency physician owing to the other potentially devastating conditions in the differential diagnosis of neck stiffness and/or odynophagia (including retropharyngeal abscess, infectious spondylitis, and meningitis.) In contrast, APCT has a benign clinical course and can be easily managed in the emergency department. We will present a case of APCT, followed by a brief discussion of the disease and current literature.

Achieving efficiency in crowded emergency departments: a research agenda.

In 2011, Academic Emergency Medicine convened a consensus conference entitled "Interventions to Assure Quality in the Crowded Emergency Department." This article, a product of the breakout session on "interventions to safeguard efficiency of care," explores various elements of the research agenda on efficiency and quality in crowded emergency departments (EDs). The authors discuss four areas identified as critical to achieving progress in the research agenda for improving ED efficiency: 1) What measures can be used to understand and improve the efficiency and quality of interventions in the ED? 2) Which factors outside of the ED's control affect ED efficiency? 3) How do workforce factors affect ED efficiency? 4) How do ED design, patient flow structures, and use of technology affect efficiency? Filling these knowledge gaps is vital to identifying interventions that improve the delivery of emergency care in all EDs.

Emergency severity index triage system correlation with emergency department evaluation and management billing codes and total professional charges.

OBJECTIVES: All services provided by physicians to patients during an emergency department (ED) visit, including procedures and "cognitive work," are described by common procedural terminology (CPT) codes that are translated by coders into total professional (physician) charges for the visit. These charges do not include the technical (facility) charges. The objectives of this study were to characterize associations between Emergency Severity Index (ESI) acuity level, ED Evaluation and Management (E&M) billing codes 99281-99285 and 99291, and total ED provider charges (sum of total procedure and E&M professional charges). Secondary objectives were to identify factors that might affect these associations and to evaluate the performance of ESI and identified variables to predict E&M code and average total professional charges. METHODS: The authors reviewed 276,824 patient records for calendar year 2007, of which 193,952 adult ED visits from three different ED types (community, university-based academic, and non-university-based academic) met inclusion criteria. Correlations between 1) ESI level and E&M billing code per visit by institution and 2) ESI and total professional charges were analyzed using Spearman rank correlation. Linear regression analysis was performed to identify variables that significantly affected these correlations. RESULTS: ESI level and E&M codes were moderately correlated (Spearman r = 0.51). ESI levels corresponded proportionately to higher E&M codes. ESI 1, 2, and 3 most frequently corresponded with E&M level 5 (50, 62, and 45%, respectively), and ESI 4 and 5 most frequently corresponded with E&M level 3 (56 and 67%, respectively). Only age by decade significantly affected the association between ESI level and E&M billing code. The mean total professional charge for all patient encounters was $421 (SD ± $204) with increasing mean charges per patient by increasing ESI acuity. Race and E&M code significantly affected the relationship between ESI level and total ED professional charges per patient (adjusted r(2) = 0.66). CONCLUSIONS: A moderate, nonlinear correlation exists between ESI acuity levels and ED E&M billing codes. Increasing age affects this correlation. Race and E&M code affect the correlation between ESI level and total professional charges. As such, basic triage data can be used to estimate E&M code and total professional charges. Future studies are needed to validate these findings across other institutional settings.