Transferred and delayed care of patients with colorectal cancer in a safety-net hospital system--manifestations of a distressed healthcare system.

BACKGROUND: Safety-net hospital systems provide care to a large proportion of United States' under- and uninsured population. We have witnessed delayed colorectal cancer (CRC) care in this population and sought to identify demographic and systemic differences in these patients compared to those in an insured health-care system. DESIGN, PATIENTS, AND APPROACH/MEASUREMENTS: We collected demographic, socioeconomic, and clinical data from 2005-2007 on all patients with CRC seen at Parkland Health and Hospital System (PHHS), a safety-net health system and at Presbyterian Hospital Dallas System (Presbyterian), a community health system, and compared characteristics among the two health-care systems. Variables associated with advanced stage were identified with multivariate logistic regression analysis and odds ratios were calculated. RESULTS: Three hundred and eighteen patients at PHHS and 397 patients at Presbyterian with CRC were identified. An overwhelming majority (75 %) of patients seen at the safety-net were diagnosed after being seen in the emergency department or at an outside facility. These patients had a higher percentage of stage 4 disease compared to the community. Patients within the safety-net with Medicare/private insurance had lower rates of advanced disease than uninsured patients (25 % vs. 68 %, p < 0.001). Insurance status and physician encounter resulting in diagnosis were independent predictors of disease stage at diagnosis. CONCLUSIONS: A large proportion of patients seen in the safety-net health system were transferred from outside systems after diagnosis, thus leading to delayed care. This delay in care drove advanced stage at diagnosis. The data point to a pervasive and systematic issue in patients with CRC and have fundamental health policy implications for population-based CRC screening.

Systems-based improvement in door-to-balloon times at a large urban teaching hospital: a follow-up study from Parkland Health and Hospital System.

BACKGROUND: Timely reperfusion in ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients improves clinical outcomes. Implementing strategies to target institutional-specific delays are crucial for improved patient care. METHODS AND RESULTS: Using a novel strategy to analyze specific components of door-to-balloon time (DBT) at our institution, we previously identified several specific interval delays in our prior STEMI protocol. We then implemented 4 strategies to reduce DBT: (1) emergency department physician activation of the STEMI protocol; (2) "single call" broadcast paging of the STEMI team by the page operator; (3) immediate feedback to the emergency and cardiology departments with joint monthly quality improvement meetings; and (4) transfer of the off-hours STEMI patient directly to the laboratory on activation by an in-hospital team. After implementation of the new protocol, we examined each component time interval from the first 59 consecutive STEMI patients treated with the new protocol between March 2007 and June 2008 and compared time intervals with the previous 184 STEMI patients. Compared with the previous 184 STEMI patients, the median DBT of the subsequent 59 STEMI patients significantly improved from 125 to 86 minutes (P<0.0001). This improvement was largely driven by a decrease in the interval from the initial 12-lead ECG to activation of the on-call catheterization team (from 40 to 11 minutes, P<0.0001). CONCLUSIONS: After examining specific component delays in our institution's DBT, we were able to successfully use quality improvement strategies to focus on specific sources of delay in our institution. This dramatically improved our median DBT toward the goal of achieving a guideline-recommended <90 minutes for all patients.