A Multi-Component Transition of Care Improvement Project to Reduce Hospital Readmissions Following Ischemic Stroke.

Background: Ischemic stroke (IS) is a common cause of hospitalization which carries a significant economic burden and leads to high rates of death and disability. Readmission in the first 30 days after hospitalization is associated with increased healthcare costs and higher risk of death and disability. Efforts to decrease the number of patients returning to the hospital after IS may improve quality and cost of care. Methods: Improving care transitions to reduce readmissions is amenable to quality improvement (QI) initiatives. A multi-component QI intervention directed at IS patients being discharged to home from a stroke unit at an academic comprehensive stroke center using IS diagnosis-driven home care referrals, improved post-discharge telephone calls, and timely completion of discharge summaries was developed. The improvement project was implemented on July 1, 2019, and evaluated for the 6 months following initiation in comparison to the same 6-month period pre-intervention in 2018. Results: Following implementation, a statistically significant decrease in 30-day all-cause same-hospital readmission rates from 7.4% to 2.8% (p = .031, d = 1.61) in the project population and from 6.6% to 3% (p = .010, d = 1.43) in the overall IS population was observed. Improvement was seen in all process measures as well as in patient satisfaction scores. Conclusions: An evidence-based bundled process improvement intervention for IS patients discharged to home was associated with decreased hospital readmission rates following IS.

"There is no one to pick up the pieces": Sustainability of antibiotic stewardship programs in nursing homes.

OBJECTIVE: To describe nursing home staff experiences and perceptions of the factors that impact the sustainability of an antibiotic stewardship program (ASP). METHODS: Using a qualitative descriptive design, semistructured interviews with staff at 9 not-for-profit nursing homes with an established ASP were conducted and audio recorded. De-identified transcriptions of the interviews were coded using a sustainability framework and were analyzed to identify themes. RESULTS: Interviews were conducted with 48 clinical and administrative staff to elicit their perceptions of the ASPs, and 7 themes were identified. ASPs were perceived to be resource intensive and "data driven," requiring access to and interpretation of data that are not readily available at many nursing homes. Though motivated and committed, ASP champions felt that they could not single-handedly sustain the program. Attending to daily clinical needs (ie, "fires") made it hard to progress beyond implementation and to reach step 2 of sustainability. Longstanding treatment habits by external prescribers and regulations were believed to impede ASP efforts. Partnerships with an external consultant with antibiotic stewardship expertise were considered important, as was the need for internal leadership support and collaboration across disciplinary boundaries. Participants felt that consistent and ongoing education on antibiotic stewardship at all staff levels was important. CONCLUSIONS: Although many interconnected factors impact the sustainability of an ASP, nursing homes may be able to sustain an ASP by focusing on 3 critical areas: (1) explicit support by nursing home leadership, (2) external partnerships with professionals with antibiotic stewardship expertise and internal interprofessional collaborations, and (3) consistent education and training for all staff.

Exploring SEIPS 2.0 as a model for analyzing care transitions across work systems.

Care transitions across healthcare settings, specifically between the emergency department (ED) and the home, are pervasive among older adults, and represent persistent healthcare quality and safety challenges. Care transitions cross multiple distinct work systems, representing a conceptual and methodological challenge for the field of Human Factors/Ergonomics - how to analyze a process that occurs across multiple work systems. As an initial step in determining how to study care transitions across work systems, we applied the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) 2.0 model, specifically the concept of configuration, to explore older adults' ED-to-home transitions. Our results suggest that configuration is useful for identifying and modeling work system barriers that interact across systems, but does not explicitly allow for the identification and analysis of the system boundaries that are crossed. To fully capture the complexity associated with care transitions, future iterations of SEIPS should introduce a mechanism to capture specific boundary types, so that system analysis can capture when and which boundaries are crossed.

Balancing Eating With Breathing: Community-Dwelling Older Adults' Experiences of Dysphagia and Texture-Modified Diets.

Purpose: Although many older adults suffer from dysphagia and are required to eat texture-modified diets, little is known about the experiences and challenges faced in doing so at home. In this study, we explored the perspectives of community-dwelling older adults as they struggled to balance dysphagia symptoms and recommended diet modifications with their preferred lifestyles. Design and Methods: Using an interpretive descriptive design, we conducted 37 in-home semi-structured interviews and 5 member-checking interviews, participant observations during a meal, and reviewed the medical charts of 20 participants recruited through maximum variation purposeful sampling. Meaning units and codes were identified and synthesized into 4 themes. Results: Participants faced a frightening choice between eating and breathing. Hiding dysphagia symptoms from the public eye was important to preserve self-identity. Following the recommended diet created a feeling that life was "falling apart." We also found that adhering to the diet was not an "all or none" phenomenon. Implications: Given that correct adherence to the restrictive diet is rare, to effectively manage dysphagia symptoms, clinicians must appreciate the full range of impact of dysphagia and texture-modified diets on the lives of older adults.

Patient Perspectives on Accessing Acute Illness Care.

INTRODUCTION: Older adults use the emergency department (ED) at high rates, including for illnesses that could be managed by their primary care providers (PCP). Policymakers have implemented barriers and incentives, often financial, to try to modify use patterns but with limited success. This study aims to understand the factors that influence older adults' decision to obtain acute illness care from the ED rather than from their PCPs. METHODS: We performed a qualitative study using a directed content analysis approach from February to October 2013. Fifteen community-dwelling older adults age≥65 years who presented to the ED of an academic medical center hospital for care and who were discharged home were enrolled. Semi-structured interviews were conducted initially in the ED and subsequently in patients' homes over the following six weeks. All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, verified, and coded. The study team jointly analyzed the data and identified themes that emerged from the interviews. RESULTS: The average age of study participants was 74 years (standard deviation ±7.2 years); 53% were female; 80% were white. We found five themes that influenced participants' decisions to obtain acute illness care from the ED: limited availability of PCP-based care, variable interactions with healthcare providers and systems, limited availability of transportation for illness care, desire to avoid burdening friends and family, and previous experiences with illnesses. CONCLUSION: Community-dwelling older adults integrate multiple factors when deciding to obtain care from an ED rather than their PCPs. These factors relate to personal and social considerations, practical issues, and individual perceptions based on previous experiences. If these findings are validated in confirmatory studies, policymakers wishing to modify where older adults receive care should consider person-centered interventions at the system and individual level, such as decision support, telemedicine, improved transport services, enhancing PCPs' capabilities, and enhancing EDs' resources to care for older patients.

Our current approach to root cause analysis: is it contributing to our failure to improve patient safety?

BACKGROUND: Despite over a decade of efforts to reduce the adverse event rate in healthcare, the rate has remained relatively unchanged. Root cause analysis (RCA) is a process used by hospitals in an attempt to reduce adverse event rates; however, the outputs of this process have not been well studied in healthcare. This study aimed to examine the types of solutions proposed in RCAs over an 8-year period at a major academic medical institution. METHODS: All state-reportable adverse events were gathered, and those for which an RCA was performed were analysed. A consensus rating process was used to determine a severity rating for each case. A qualitative approach was used to categorise the types of solutions proposed by the RCA team in each case and descriptive statistics were calculated. RESULTS: 302 RCAs were reviewed. The most common event types involved a procedure complication, followed by cardiopulmonary arrest, neurological deficit and retained foreign body. In 106 RCAs, solutions were proposed. A large proportion (38.7%) of RCAs with solutions proposed involved a patient death. Of the 731 proposed solutions, the most common solution types were training (20%), process change (19.6%) and policy reinforcement (15.2%). We found that multiple event types were repeated in the study period, despite repeated RCAs. CONCLUSIONS: This study found that the most commonly proposed solutions were weaker actions, which were less likely to decrease event recurrence. These findings support recent attempts to improve the RCA process and to develop guidance for the creation of effective and sustainable solutions to be used by RCA teams.

Who is attending? End-of-life decision making in the intensive care unit.

PURPOSE: Traditional expectations of the single attending physician who manages a patient's care do not apply in today's intensive care units (ICUs). Although many physicians and other professionals have adapted to the complexity of multiple attendings, ICU patients and families often expect the traditional, single physician model, particularly at the time of end-of-life decision making (EOLDM). Our purpose was to examine the role of ICU attending physicians in different types of ICUs and the consequences of that role for clinicians, patients, and families in the context of EOLDM. METHODS: Prospective ethnographic study in a university hospital, tertiary care center. We conducted 7 months of observations including 157 interviews in each of four adult critical care units. RESULTS: The term "attending physician" was understood by most patients and families to signify an individual accountable person. In practice, "the attending physician" was an ICU role, filled by multiple physicians on a rotating basis or by multiple physicians simultaneously. Clinicians noted that management of EOLDM varied in relation to these multiple and shifting attending responsibilities. The attending physician role in this practice context and in the EOLDM process created confusion for families and for some clinicians about who was making patient care decisions and with whom they should confer. CONCLUSIONS: Any intervention to improve the process of EOLDM in ICUs needs to reflect system changes that address clinician and patient/family confusion about EOLDM roles of the various attending physicians encountered in the ICU.

Family members' informal roles in end-of-life decision making in adult intensive care units.

BACKGROUND: To support the process of effective family decision making, it is important to recognize and understand informal roles that various family members may play in the end-of-life decision-making process. OBJECTIVE: To describe some informal roles consistently enacted by family members involved in the process of end-of-life decision making in intensive care units. METHODS: Ethnographic study. Data were collected via participant observation with field notes and semistructured interviews on 4 intensive care units in an academic health center in the mid-Atlantic United States from 2001 to 2004. The units studied were a medical, a surgical, a burn and trauma, and a cardiovascular intensive care unit. PARTICIPANTS: Health care clinicians, patients, and family members. RESULTS: Informal roles for family members consistently observed were primary caregiver, primary decision maker, family spokesperson, out-of-towner, patient's wishes expert, protector, vulnerable member, and health care expert. The identified informal roles were part of families' decision-making processes, and each role was part of a potentially complicated family dynamic for end-of-life decision making within the family system and between the family and health care domains. CONCLUSIONS: These informal roles reflect the diverse responses to demands for family decision making in what is usually a novel and stressful situation. Identification and description of these informal roles of family members can help clinicians recognize and understand the functions of these roles in families' decision making at the end of life and guide development of strategies to support and facilitate increased effectiveness of family discussions and decision-making processes.

Intensive care unit cultures and end-of-life decision making.

PURPOSE: Prior researchers studying end-of-life decision making (EOLDM) in intensive care units (ICUs) often have collected data retrospectively and aggregated data across units. There has been little research, however, about how cultures differ among ICUs. This research was designed to study limitation of treatment decision making in real time and to evaluate similarities and differences in the cultural contexts of 4 ICUs and the relationship of those contexts to EOLDM. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Ethnographic field work took place in 4 adult ICUs in a tertiary care hospital. Participants were health care providers (eg, physicians, nurses, and social workers), patients, and their family members. Participant observation and interviews took place 5 days a week for 7 months in each unit. RESULTS: The ICUs were not monolithic. There were similarities, but important differences in EOLDM were identified in formal and informal rules, meaning and uses of technology, physician roles and relationships, processes such as unit rounds, and timing of initiation of EOLDM. CONCLUSIONS: As interventions to improve EOLDM are developed, it will be important to understand how they may interact with unit cultures. Attempting to develop one intervention to be used in all ICUs is unlikely to be successful.

The dying patient in the ICU: role of the interdisciplinary team.

Expert opinion supports the application of broad interdisciplinary team approaches to the care of the dying patient in the intensive care unit (ICU). Current literature contains many suggestions about how core team members-physicians, nurses, and patients/family members-could systematically enhance interdisciplinary collaboration in the care of the dying patient. In the few studies of ICU interdisciplinary collaborative care of the dying patient, investigator shave demonstrated improvement in care. In addition, ethics consultants and interdisciplinary palliative care teams, working with the core team members, have improved care for the dying. Further studies are needed to document alternative interdisciplinary models for achieving improved and durable patient, family,and provider outcomes in the care of the dying ICU patient.

HIV/AIDS in older adults: a case study and discussion.

Infection associated with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in older adults is an increasing problem in clinical care. Often regarded as a disease of the young, more than 10% of HIV infection actually is found in people 50 years of age and older. In addition, individuals with HIV and AIDS are living longer. Approximately 71% of them currently are in their 30s and 40s. Given the current therapies available, it is conceivable that these patients will live well into their 60s and beyond. A case study describing the acute care experience of a 77-year-old African American man is reported. Pitfalls of diagnosis and management are discussed in relation to the care of an older person with HIV disease. The epidemiology of HIV in this population and a review of some recent literature and research on HIV and older adults are presented.