Causes of unplanned hospital admissions: implications for practice and policy.

Unplanned hospitalizations among home health patients were reviewed to identify preventable hospital admissions and their causes. Study methods included treatment record review; interviews with home health visit staff, supervisors, and managers; and review of orientation materials and policies. Findings from this study suggest focus areas for home health agencies and other stakeholders to reduce acute care hospitalization rates and in other quality improvement initiatives.

Statewide identification of adverse events using retrospective nurse review: methods and outcomes.

This study was conducted as part of a two-state study of the validity of hospital discharge data for adverse event (AE) surveillance. Reliability of nurse identification of AEs was assessed through comparison with physician review. Nurses reviewed 6,296 medical records selected from two sampling frames. All were patients in 41 Utah acute care hospitals and surgery patients in 36 Missouri hospitals. A total of 1,035 records were independently reviewed by physicians using the same methods. Overall agreement between nurse and physician findings in Utah and Missouri, at the case level, was 78.5% (238/303) and 68.2% (499/732), respectively. Nurse review of medical records to identify AEs represents a cost-effective alternative to physician review for large-scale and ongoing patient safety improvements and surveillance purposes.

Improved clinical outcomes with utilization of a community-acquired pneumonia guideline.

BACKGROUND: We previously reported decreased mortality following implementation of a community-acquired pneumonia guideline derived from specialty society recommendations. However, patients with respiratory failure and sepsis from pneumonia were not included, adjustment for comorbidities was limited, and no guideline compliance data were available. We also questioned whether decreased mortality continued after 1997. METHODS: We utilized Utah data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid from 1993 to 2003 to determine if pneumonia guideline implementation was associated with 30-day all-cause mortality, length of hospital stay, and readmission rate. We adjusted outcomes by age, gender, Deyo comorbidity score, prior hospitalizations, and race. Guideline compliance was measured by initial default guideline antibiotic administration. We included patients > or = 66 years old with primary International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification codes 480.0-483.9, 485.0-486.9, 487.0, 507.0 or 518.81, and 038.x with secondary code pneumonia. We excluded patients with prior hospitalization within 10 days, patients with HIV infection or transplant recipients, and patients not treated by physicians closely affiliated with study hospitals. RESULTS: Mean (+/- SD) age of 17,728 pneumonia patients admitted to the hospital was 72.3 +/- 12.0 years, 55.2% were female, and 96.0% were white. Within Intermountain Healthcare hospitals, a 1-SD increase (10%) in guideline compliance (range, 61 to 100%) was associated with mortality odds ratio (OR) of 0.92 (95% confidence interval[CI], 0.87 to 0.98; p = 0.007). Mortality OR at 16 Intermountain Healthcare hospitals was 0.89 (95% CI, 0.82 to 0.97; p = 0.007) compared with 19 other Utah hospitals. This mortality difference corresponds to approximately 20 lives saved yearly. The readmission rate was also lower. CONCLUSION: Improved clinical outcomes were associated with pneumonia guideline utilization.

Learning from unexpected events: a root cause analysis training program.

Staff members need appropriate training before the investigation and causal analysis of accidents in any complex system. Otherwise results will be incomplete and will be focused on the Least manageable contributors, such as the unsafe acts of frontline operators, regardless of the degree of organizational commitment. This is particularly true in healthcare, a field in which errors have traditionally been understood in terms of breaches of personal and professional accountability. This article outlines an incident investigation and root cause analysis workshop developed to address this training need for healthcare professionals representing the full spectrum of healthcare settings in Utah and Nevada and reviews feedback from participants.

Improving health care systems performance: a human factors approach.

Under contract from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Medicare Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs) promote improvement in health care system performance. With the QIO contract cycle that began in the fall of 1999, CMS adopted a broad national improvement agenda emphasizing 24 quality measures from 6 clinical topic areas. The Utah QIO developed a human factors and organizational safety management-based intervention strategy for the inpatient clinical topic areas, borrowing approaches and principles previously applied in hospital-based medication systems safety improvement efforts. Evaluation used measures and methods established by CMS to assess the adequacy of QIO performance nationwide. Comparison of statewide inpatient quality indicator performance rates in 1998 and 2000 showed absolute improvement on 15 of the 16 measures used. The average reduction in the failure rate for these clinical topic areas in Utah was 27.3%; this was the highest rate of improvement for any state in the nation. Utah's overall ranking on the combined inpatient clinical topic areas went from 16th at baseline to first at follow-up. The evaluation demonstrates exceptional levels of performance improvement in Utah hospitals when compared with national trends. It is, however, neither possible to uniquely isolate the effects of the QIO intervention from larger trends operating statewide, nor can the contributions of the various facets of the QIO intervention be disaggregated. The application of human factors and organizational safety management principles represents a promising strategy for accelerating the pace of improvement in health care.