The Kaiser Permanente Northern California Enhanced Recovery After Surgery Program: Design, Development, and Implementation.

Complications are common after surgery, highlighting the need for innovations that reduce postsurgical morbidity and mortality. In this report, we describe the design, development, and implementation of an Enhanced Recovery After Surgery program in the Kaiser Permanente Northern California integrated health care delivery system. This program was implemented and disseminated in 2014, targeting patients who underwent elective colorectal resection and those who underwent emergent hip fracture repair across 20 Medical Centers. The program leveraged multidisciplinary and broad-based leadership, high-quality data and analytic infrastructure, patient-centered education, and regional-local mentorship alignment. This program has already had an impact on more than 17,000 patients in Northern California. It is now in its fourth phase of planning and implementation, expanding Enhanced Recovery pathways to all surgical patients across Kaiser Permanente Northern California.

Enhanced Recovery After Surgery Program Implementation in 2 Surgical Populations in an Integrated Health Care Delivery System.

Importance: Novel approaches to perioperative surgical care focus on optimizing nutrition, mobility, and pain management to minimize adverse events after surgical procedures. Objective: To evaluate the outcomes of an enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) program among 2 target populations: patients undergoing elective colorectal resection and patients undergoing emergency hip fracture repair. Design, Setting, and Participants: A pre-post difference-in-differences study before and after ERAS implementation in the target populations compared with contemporaneous surgical comparator groups (patients undergoing elective gastrointestinal surgery and emergency orthopedic surgery). Implementation began in February and March 2014 and concluded by the end of 2014 at 20 medical centers within the Kaiser Permanente Northern California integrated health care delivery system. Exposures: A multifaceted ERAS program designed with a particular focus on perioperative pain management, mobility, nutrition, and patient engagement. Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary outcome was hospital length of stay. Secondary outcomes included hospital mortality, home discharge, 30-day readmission rates, and complication rates. Results: The study included a total of 3768 patients undergoing elective colorectal resection (mean [SD] age, 62.7 [14.1] years; 1812 [48.1%] male) and 5002 patients undergoing emergency hip fracture repair (mean [SD] age, 79.5 [11.8] years; 1586 [31.7%] male). Comparator surgical patients included 5556 patients undergoing elective gastrointestinal surgery and 1523 patients undergoing emergency orthopedic surgery. Most process metrics had significantly greater changes in the ERAS target populations after implementation compared with comparator surgical populations, including those for ambulation, nutrition, and opioid use. Hospital length of stay and postoperative complication rates were also significantly lower among ERAS target populations after implementation. The rate ratios for postoperative complications were 0.68 (95% CI, 0.46-0.99; P = .04) for patients undergoing colorectal resection and 0.67 (95% CI, 0.45-0.99, P = .05) for patients with hip fracture. Among patients undergoing colorectal resection, ERAS implementation was associated with decreased rates of hospital mortality (0.17; 95% CI, 0.03-0.86; P = .03), whereas among patients with hip fracture, implementation was associated with increased rates of home discharge (1.24; 95% CI, 1.06-1.44; P = .007). Conclusions and Relevance: Multicenter implementation of an ERAS program among patients undergoing elective colorectal resection and patients undergoing emergency hip fracture repair successfully altered processes of care and was associated with significant absolute and relative decreases in hospital length of stay and postoperative complication rates. Rapid, large-scale implementation of a multidisciplinary ERAS program is feasible and effective in improving surgical outcomes.

The power of the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program--achieving a zero pneumonia rate in general surgery patients.

The National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) of the American College of Surgeons provides risk-adjusted surgical outcome measures for participating hospitals that can be used for performance improvement of surgical mortality and morbidity. A surgical clinical nurse reviewer collects 135 clinical variables including preoperative risk factors, intraoperative variables, and 30-day postoperative mortality and morbidity outcomes for patients undergoing major surgical procedures. A report on mortality and complications is prepared twice a year. This article summarizes briefly the history of NSQIP and how its report on surgical outcomes can be used for performance improvement within a hospital system. In particular, it describes how to drive performance improvement with NSQIP data using the example of postoperative respiratory complications--a major factor of postoperative mortality. In addition, this article explains the benefit of a collaborative of several participating NSQIP hospitals and describes how to develop a "playbook" on the basis of an outcome improvement project.

Implementation of a high-alert medication program.

INTRODUCTION: Greater than 500,000 doses of high-alert medications are administered throughout the Kaiser Permanente Northern California (KPNC) Program on an annual basis. High-alert medications (HAM) carry a higher risk of harm than other medications and errors in the administration of HAM can have catastrophic clinical outcomes. The purpose of this project is to ensure safe medication practices and to eliminate medication errors that cause harm to our patients.The Program: KPNC leadership, physicians, nurses, pharmacists, quality leaders, and labor unions worked with regional and local medication safety committees to: 1) standardize high-alert medication-handling practices; 2) enhance education programs related to medication practices, embedding these into annual core competencies of all staff who handle high-alert medications; 3) develop monitoring functions at both the regional and local levels to ensure sustainability and ongoing systems improvements. Begun in December 2005, this program covers the delivery of high-alert medications across the continuum of care and affects all patients receiving HAM. MEASURES: The initial phase of the monitoring process was put in place to measure compliance with implementation. Over the first few months of the program the 90% minimal threshold was surpassed with regional overall compliance of 95%. Following this initial process, the Regional Medication Safety Committee developed monitoring tools. Department managers carry out these concurrent observational audits at the medical centers with oversight by the Assistant Administrators for Quality and Service. These audits are designed to measure whether or not all medications on the HAM list are handled specifically to policy requirements, eg, independent double-checks, HAM stickers, etc. Audit specifications are provided for each audit tool. Medical Center audit results from the third quarter of 2006 through the third quarter of 2007 have shown a regional aggregate of 97.7% compliance. As the high percentages of compliance have held constant over time, more actionable metrics are being put in place for 2008.To determine whether or not the program is reducing HAM errors, data from the regional Quality and Risk database (MIDAS) related to all high-alert medication errors was reviewed. Two interventions were of note: in July of 2005, there was a renewed effort to educate leaders, managers, physicians, and staff on responsible reporting in a "just culture" and the introduction of the new Responsible Reporting Form. An increase in reporting was noted at this time. In December 2005, the HAM program was introduced. There is a statistically significant drop in errors reported for 23 consecutive months following this program. These findings were similar for all phases of the delivery process. A powerful indicator of improvement is the average days between major injury and death. As of November 30, 2007, it has been 232 days since the last significant negative event was reported due to a HAM. CONCLUSION: This program has been implemented in all of the KPNC Medical Centers and is in the process of being implemented in all KP regions. This spread has been endorsed by the Medical Directors Quality Committee and by the KP Boards of Directors. The Interregional Medication Safety Committee is overseeing the spread process. A toolkit containing all of the required tools plus additional materials and information has been developed and made available throughout KP. The program is the recipient of the 2007 Lawrence Patient Safety Award.