Association between emergency department pediatric readiness and transfer of noninjured children in small rural hospitals.

PURPOSE: Pediatric readiness scores may be a useful measure of a hospital's preparedness to care for children. However, there is limited evidence linking these scores with patient outcomes or other metrics, including the need for interfacility transfer. This study aims to determine the association of pediatric readiness scores with the odds of interfacility transfer among a cohort of noninjured children (< 18 years old) presenting to emergency departments (EDs) in small rural hospitals in the state of California. METHODS: Data from the National Pediatric Readiness Project assessment were linked with the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development's ED and inpatient databases to conduct a cross-sectional study of pediatric interfacility transfers. Hospitals were manually matched between these data sets. Logistic regression was performed with random intercepts for hospital and adjustment for patient-level confounders. FINDINGS: A total of 54 hospitals and 135,388 encounters met the inclusion criteria. EDs with a high pediatric readiness score (>70) had lower adjusted odds of transfer (aOR: 0.55, 95% CI: 0.33-0.93) than EDs with a low pediatric readiness score (≤ 70). The pediatric readiness section with strongest association with transfer was the "policies, procedures, and protocols" section; EDs in the highest quartile had lower odds of transfer than EDs in the lowest quartile (aOR: 0.54, 95% CI: 0.31-0.91). CONCLUSIONS: Pediatric patients presenting to EDs at small rural hospitals with high pediatric readiness scores may be less likely to be transferred. Additional studies are recommended to investigate other pediatric outcomes in relation to hospital ED pediatric readiness.

Increasing Use of Ambulatory Video Visits for Pediatric Patients by Using Quality Improvement Methods.

INTRODUCTION: Live video visits for ambulatory encounters offer potential benefits, including access to remote subspecialty services, care coordination between providers, and improved convenience for patients. We aimed to increase the utilization of video visits for pediatric patients at our medical center using an iterative quality improvement process. METHODS: A multispecialty improvement team identified opportunities to increase video visit utilization and prioritized interventions using benefit-effort analyses. Interventions focused on 6 key drivers. The outcome measure was the percentage of ambulatory encounters conducted by video. The process measure was the percentage of ambulatory pediatricians conducting video visits. The balancing measure was the percentage of no-shows among scheduled video visits. All measures were analyzed using statistical process control. RESULTS: Interventions were associated with increases in our outcome and process measures from 0.1% to 1.2% and 0.6% to 6.3%, respectively, during the first 8 months. Subsequently, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic was associated with further increases in these measures to 41.8% and 73.5%, respectively, over 3 months. The balancing measure increased from 0% at baseline to 14.7% with no special cause variation during the intervention period. The most impactful interventions included clinician training outreach, providing equipment, and streamlining MyChart patient enrollment. CONCLUSIONS: This improvement project effectively increased pediatric ambulatory video visit utilization, although the most significant driver of utilization was the COVID-19 pandemic. Project interventions implemented before COVID-19 facilitated rapid video visit adoption during the pandemic. A similar improvement process may be beneficial for other medical centers aiming to improve video visit utilization.

Emergency Department Pediatric Readiness and Potentially Avoidable Transfers.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the association between potentially avoidable transfers (PATs) and emergency department (ED) pediatric readiness scores and the score's associated components. STUDY DESIGN: This cross-sectional study linked the 2012 National Pediatric Readiness Project assessment with individual encounter data from California's statewide ED and inpatient databases during the years 2011-2013. A probabilistic linkage, followed by deterministic heuristics, linked pretransfer, and post-transfer encounters. Applying previously published definitions, a transferred child was considered a PAT if they were discharged within 1 day from the ED or inpatient care and had no specialized procedures. Analyses were stratified by injured and noninjured children. We compared PATs with necessary transfers using mixed-effects logistic regression models with random intercepts for hospital and adjustment for patient and hospital covariates. RESULTS: After linkage, there were 6765 injured children (27% PATs) and 18 836 noninjured children (14% PATs) who presented to 283 hospitals. In unadjusted analyses, a 10-point increase in pediatric readiness was associated with lower odds of PATs in both injured (OR 0.93, 95% CI 0.90-0.96) and noninjured children (OR 0.90, 95% CI 0.88-0.93). In adjusted analyses, a similar association was detected in injured patients (aOR 0.92, 95% CI 0.86-0.98) and was not detected in noninjured patients (aOR 0.94, 95% CI 0.88-1.00). Components associated with decreased PATs included having a nurse pediatric emergency care coordinator and a quality improvement plan. CONCLUSIONS: Hospital ED pediatric readiness is associated with lower odds of a PAT. Certain pediatric readiness components are modifiable risk factors that EDs could target to reduce PATs.

Association of Insurance With Use of Emergency Medical Services Among Children.

OBJECTIVE: The use of emergency medical services (EMS) can be lifesaving for critically ill children and should be defined by the child's clinical need. Our objective was to determine whether nonclinical demographic factors and insurance status are associated with EMS use among children presenting to the emergency department (ED). METHODS: In this cross-sectional study using the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, we included children presenting to EDs from 2009 to 2014. We evaluated the association between EMS use and patients' insurance status using multivariable logistic regressions, adjusting for demographic, socioeconomic, and clinical factors such as illness severity as measured by a modified and recalibrated version of the Revised Pediatric Emergency Assessment Tool (mRePEAT) and the presence of comorbidities or chronic conditions. A propensity score analysis was performed to validate our findings. RESULTS: Of the estimated 191,299,454 children presenting to EDs, 11,178,576 (5.8%) arrived by EMS and 171,145,895 (89.5%) arrived by other means. Children arriving by EMS were more ill [mRePEAT score, 1.13; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.12-1.14 vs mRePEAT score, 1.01; 95% CI: 1.01-1.02] and more likely to have a comorbidity or chronic condition (OR: 3.17, 95% CI: 2.80-3.59). In the adjusted analyses, the odds of EMS use were higher for uninsured children and lower for children with public insurance compared with children with private insurance [OR (95% CI): uninsured, 1.41 (1.12-1.78); public, 0.77 (0.65-0.90)]. The propensity score analysis showed similar results. CONCLUSIONS: In contrast to adult patients, children with public insurance are less likely to use EMS than children with private insurance, even after adjustment for illness severity and other confounders.

Telemedicine for Interfacility Nurse Handoffs.

OBJECTIVE: To compare nurse preparedness and quality of patient handoff during interfacility transfers from a pretransfer emergency department to a PICU when conducted over telemedicine versus telephone. DESIGN: Cross-sectional nurse survey linked with patient electronic medical record data using multivariable, multilevel analysis. SETTING: Tertiary PICU within an academic children's hospital. PARTICIPANTS: PICU nurses who received a patient handoff between October 2017 and July 2018. INTERVENTIONS: None. MAIN RESULTS AND MEASUREMENTS: Among 239 eligible transfers, 106 surveys were completed by 55 nurses (44% survey response rate). Telemedicine was used for 30 handoffs (28%), and telephone was used for 76 handoffs (72%). Patients were comparable with respect to age, sex, race, primary spoken language, and insurance, but handoffs conducted over telemedicine involved patients with higher illness severity as measured by the Pediatric Risk of Mortality III score (4.4 vs 1.9; p = 0.05). After adjusting for Pediatric Risk of Mortality III score, survey recall time, and residual clustering by nurse, receiving nurses reported higher preparedness (measured on a five-point adjectival scale) following telemedicine handoffs compared with telephone handoffs (3.4 vs 3.1; p = 0.02). There were no statistically significant differences in both bivariable and multivariable analyses of handoff quality as measured by the Handoff Clinical Evaluation Exercise. Handoffs using telemedicine were associated with increased number of Illness severity, Patient summary, Action list, Situation awareness and contingency planning, Synthesis by receiver components (3.3 vs 2.8; p = 0.04), but this difference was not significant in the adjusted analysis (3.1 vs 2.9; p = 0.55). CONCLUSIONS: Telemedicine is feasible for nurse-to-nurse handoffs of critically ill patients between pretransfer and receiving facilities and may be associated with increased perceived and objective nurse preparedness upon patient arrival. Additional research is needed to demonstrate that telemedicine during nurse handoffs improves communication, decreases preventable adverse events, and impacts family and provider satisfaction.

Association Between Insurance and Transfer of Injured Children From Emergency Departments.

OBJECTIVES: To determine if injured children presenting to nondesignated trauma centers are more or less likely to be transferred relative to being admitted based on insurance status. METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study by using the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Nationwide Emergency Department Sample. Pediatric trauma patients receiving care in emergency departments (EDs) at nontrauma centers who were either admitted locally or transferred to another hospital were included. We performed logistic regression analysis adjusting for injury severity and other confounders and incorporated nationally representative weights to determine the association between insurance and transfer or admission. RESULTS: Nine thousand four hundred and sixty-one ED pediatric trauma events at 386 nontrauma centers met inclusion criteria. EDs that treated a higher proportion of patients with Medicaid had higher odds of transfer relative to admission (odds ratio [OR]: 1.2 per 10% increase in Medicaid; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.1-1.4), resulting in overall higher odds of transfer among patients with Medicaid compared with patients with private insurance (OR: 1.3; 95% CI: 1.0-1.5). A patient's insurance status was not associated with different odds of transfer relative to admission within individual EDs after adjusting for the ED's proportion of patients with Medicaid (Medicaid OR: 1.0; 95% CI: 0.8-1.1). CONCLUSIONS: Injured pediatric patients presenting to nondesignated trauma centers are slightly more likely to be transferred than admitted when the ED treats a higher proportion of Medicaid patients. In this study, ongoing concerns about inequities in the delivery of care among hospitals treating high proportions of children with Medicaid are reinforced.