Nurse home visitation with vulnerable families in rural areas: A qualitative case file review.

OBJECTIVE: Nurse home visiting may address challenges and resource disparities that threaten maternal and infant well-being in rural areas, but little is known about United States' program implementation. This qualitative study explored how family and community characteristics affected rural nurse home visiting. SAMPLE: The sample for content analysis included families beginning services in 2010-2011 living in the rural counties with the highest caseloads (433 families). DESIGN: Electronic nurse home visiting case files from three rural counties were analyzed using a content analysis approach. The partner agency provided input on key constructs of interest but independent coding was also done to capture additional themes. Quantitative county level data and comments from member checking informed interpretation. Member checking included individual nurses serving the selected counties (n = 3) and input from an agency level supervisory meeting for validation. RESULTS: Concerns of families served (e.g., mental health) may not be unique to rural areas, but challenges to accessing resources and constellation of needs were. Nurses adapted engagement and service strategies to meet these needs. CONCLUSION: Agencies serving rural areas should allocate resources and adapt training to support nurses based on unique community profiles. More research on rural nurse home visiting practice and outcomes is needed.

Translating an Evidence-Based Injury Prevention Program for Implementation in a Home Visitation Setting.

Safe N' Sound (SNS), a computer-based childhood injury prevention program, provides individually tailored information to parents about their child's injury risks with specific behavioral recommendations. We translated SNS for implementation in a home visitation organization in order to increase its capacity to effectively address injury prevention and decrease the burden of injury experienced by high-need families. The aim of this study was to identify behavioral and organizational barriers and facilitators to translating and implementing SNS in a home visitation setting. Nurse home visitors (NHVs) participated in semistructured interviews that examined perceptions of program implementation, intervention characteristics, individual characteristics of NHVs, and recommendations for improving implementation. The utility of the program for promoting injury prevention systematically and its alignment with the organization's mission were facilitators of successful implementation. Barriers included NHVs' concerns about overburdening clients and missed educational opportunities related to injury risks not addressed by the program and delayed delivery of educational reports. Findings illustrate the dynamic interactions of intervention characteristics with organizational and individual factors and suggest that customizing implementation to organizational capacity and specific needs may better support successful program implementation in home visitation settings.

The cost of serious fall-related injuries at three Midwestern hospitals.

BACKGROUND: Consequences of fall-related injuries can be both physically and financially costly, yet without current data, hospitals cannot completely determine the financial cost. As part of the analysis for an initiative to minimize falls with injury, the cost and length of stay attributable to serious fall injury were estimated at three hospitals in a Midwestern health care system METHODS: In a retrospective case-control study, 57 hospital inpatients discharged between January 1, 2004, and October 16, 2006, who sustained a serious fall-related injury (fracture, subdural hematoma, any injury resulting in surgical intervention, or death) were identified through the incident reporting system and matched to nonfaller inpatient controls by hospital, age within five years, year of discharge, and diagnosis-related group (DRG). RESULTS: Multivariate analyses indicated that operational costs for fallers with serious injury, as compared with controls, were $13,316 more (p < .01; 95% confidence interval [CI], $1,395-$35,561) and that fallers stayed 6.3 days longer than nonfallers (p < .001; 95% CI, 2.4-14.9). Univariate analyses indicated they were also significantly more likely to have diabetes with organ damage, moderate to severe renal disease, and a higher mean score on the Charlson Comorbidity Index. In optimal bipartite matching (OBM) analyses, fallers with serious injury cost $13,806 more (p < .001; 95% CI, $5,808-$29,450) and stayed 6.9 days longer (p < .001; 95% CI, 2.8-14.9). CONCLUSIONS: Hospital inpatients who sustained a serious fall-related injury had higher total operational costs and longer lengths of stay than nonfallers. Despite possible limitations regarding the cost allocation methods, the analysis included data from three different hospitals, and supplemental multivariate analyses adjusting for academic hospital status did not meaningfully affect the results.

Clinical validation of the AHRQ postoperative venous thromboembolism patient safety indicator.

BACKGROUND: The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) patient safety indicators (PSIs) screen for potentially preventable complications in hospitalized patients using hospital administrative data. The PSI for postoperative venous thromboembolism (VTE) relies on International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) codes for deep vein thrombosis (DVT) or pulmonary embolism (PE) in secondary diagnoses fields. In a clinical validation study of the PSI for postoperative VTE, natural language processing (NLP), supplemented by pharmacy and billing data, was used to identify VTE events missed by medical records coders. METHODS: In a retrospective review of postsurgical discharges, charts were processed using the AHRQ PSI software. Cases were identified as possible false negatives by flagging charts for possible VTEs using pharmacy and billing data to identify all patients who were therapeutically anticoagulated or had placement of an inferior vena caval filter. All charts were reviewed by a physician blinded to screening results. Physician interpretation was considered the gold standard for VTE classification. RESULTS: The AHRQ PSI had a positive predictive value (PPV) of .545 (95% confidence interval [CI], .453-.634) and a negative predictive value (NPV) of .997 (95% CI, .995-.999). Sensitivity was .87 and specificity was .98. Secondary coding review suggested that all 9 false-negative results were miscoded; if they had been properly coded, the sensitivity would increase to 1.00. Most false-positive cases resulted from superficial venous clots identified by the PSI due to coding ambiguity. DISCUSSION: The VTE PSI performed well as a screening tool but generated a significant number of false-positive cases, a problem that could be substantially reduced with improved coding methods.

Case-control study of pediatric cardiothoracic surgical site infections .

A retrospective case-control study was performed to determine the risks and outcomes associated with pediatric cardiothoracic surgical site infection. Undergoing more than 1 cardiothoracic operative procedure, having preoperative infection, and undergoing surgery on a Monday were significant risk factors. Cardiothoracic surgical site infection increased hospital and pediatric intensive care unit length of stay. Deep surgical site infection significantly increased mortality.

Risk Factors for Craniotomy or Spinal Fusion Surgical Site Infection.

BACKGROUND: Surgical site infections (SSIs) occur in approximately 700 pediatric patients annually and are associated with increased morbidity, mortality and cost. The aim of this study is to determine risk factors for SSI among pediatric patients undergoing craniotomy and spinal fusion. METHODS: This is a retrospective case-control study. Cases were craniotomy or spinal fusion patients with SSI as defined by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria with surgery performed from January 1, 2008 to July 31, 2009. For each case patient, 3 uninfected controls were randomly selected among patients who underwent the same procedure as the case patient within 1 month. We performed analyses of risk factors for craniotomy and spinal fusion SSI separately and as a combined outcome variable. RESULTS: Underweight body mass index, increased time at lowest body temperature, increased interval to antibiotic redosing, the combination of vancomycin and cefazolin for prophylaxis, longer preoperative and postoperative intensive care unit stay and anticoagulant use at 2 weeks postoperatively were associated with an increased risk of SSI in the combined analysis of craniotomy and spinal fusion. Forty-seven percent of cases and 27% of controls received preoperative antibiotic doses that were inappropriately low because of their weight. CONCLUSIONS: We identified modifiable risk factors for SSI including antibiotic dosing and body temperature during surgery. Preoperative antibiotic administration is likely to benefit from standard processes. Further studies of risk benefit for prolonged low body temperature during procedures are needed to determine the optimal balance between neuroprotection and potential immunosuppression associated with low body temperature.

Evidence for potential bias in the Health and Activity Limitation Index as a health preference measure for persons with disabilities.

BACKGROUND: The American public health plan Healthy People 2010 sets overall goals based on utility-linked information from the Health and Activity Limitation Index (HALex). However, little is known about how utilities measured by the HALex compare with those from established gold standard preference-based utility measures. In addition, distribution of HALex values from the general population underrepresents the experience of persons with disability, leading to uncertain interpretation of their utility values. Therefore, we sought to report the validity and interpretation of HALex scores compared to scores from a preference-based health-related quality of life measure, the Quality of Well-Being (QWB) scale. METHODS: A telephone survey with component measures was administered in random order. Participants consisted of 401 adults from a large Midwest metropolitan area: 302 were selected by random-digit-dial methodology and 99 were volunteers with mobility impairment extending the disability values of the sample. Multiple regression analysis predicted HALex scores from QWB scores and from demographic and self-reported health characteristics. RESULTS: QWB scores accounted for 41% of the variance in HALex scores. The addition of five demographic and health factors increased the variance explained to 63%. Scores on the QWB and HALex were similar on mid-range values and discrepant at the extremes; that is, persons with extreme HALex scores tended to have more moderate QWB scores. HALex scores were higher for white adults than predicted by their QWB scores and lower for people with chronic diseases and disabilities. CONCLUSIONS: Utilities as measured by the HALex and QWB can differ markedly, particularly if the person is classified at either end of the spectrum of function. Of similar concern is that fact that HALex scores show a systematic bias in relationship to QWB scores depending on a person's demographic and health-related characteristics.