Inpatient Capacity Management during COVID-19 Pandemic: The Yale New Haven Hospital Capacity Expansion Experience.

The 2019 SARS-CoV2 virus presented a capacity demand scenario for Yale New Haven Hospital. The response was created with a focus on clinical needs, but was also driven by the unique characteristics of the buildings within our institution. These physical characteristics were considered in the response as a safety measure as little was known about the transmissibility risk in the acute hospital setting of SARS-CoV2 at the time of response. The lessons learned in capacity expansion to meet the potentially catastrophic demand for acute care services due to a novel, poorly understood pathogen are discussed here.

Design and Implementation of an Agitation Code Response Team in the Emergency Department.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: Agitation, defined as excessive psychomotor activity leading to violent and aggressive behavior, is becoming more prevalent in the emergency department (ED) amidst a strained behavioral health system. Team-based interventions have demonstrated promise in promoting de-escalation, with the hope of minimizing the need for invasive techniques, like physical restraints. This study aimed to evaluate an interprofessional code response team intervention to manage agitation in the ED with the goal of decreasing physical restraint use. METHODS: This quality improvement study occurred over 3 phases, representing stepwise rollout of the intervention: (1) preimplementation (phase I) to establish baseline outcome rates; (2) design and administrative support (phase II) to conduct training and protocol design; and (3) implementation (phase III) of the code response team. An interrupted time-series analysis was used to compare trends between phases to evaluate the primary outcome of physical restraint orders occurring during the study period. RESULTS: Within the 634,578 ED visits over a 5-year period, restraint use significantly declined sequentially over the 3 phases (1.1%, 0.9%, and 0.8%, absolute change -0.3% between phases I and III, 95% confidence interval [CI] -0.4% to 0.3%), which corresponded to a 27.3% proportionate decrease in restraint rates between phases I and III. For the interrupted time-series analysis, there was a significantly decreasing slope in biweekly restraints in phase II compared to phase I (slope, -0.05 restraints per 1,000 ED visits per 2-week period, 95% CI -0.07 to -0.03), which was sustained in an incremental fashion in phase III (slope, -0.05, 95% CI -0.07 to -0.02). CONCLUSION: With the implementation of a structured agitation code response team intervention combined with design and administrative support, a decreased rate of physical restraint use occurred over a 5-year period. Results suggest that investment in organizational change, along with interprofessional collaboration during the management of agitated patients in the ED, can lead to sustained reductions in the use of an invasive and potentially harmful measure on patients.

Improving Emergency Department Throughput Using Audit-and-Feedback With Peer Comparison Among Emergency Department Physicians.

INTRODUCTION: We sought to determine if audit-and-feedback with peer comparison among emergency physicians is associated with improved emergency department (ED) throughput and decreased variation in physician performance. METHODS: We implemented an audit-and-feedback with peer comparison tool at a single urban academic ED from March 1, 2013, to July 1, 2018. In the first study period, physicians received no reports. In the second period, they received daily reports. In the third period, they received daily, quarterly, and annual reports. Outcomes included patients per hour, admission rate, time to admission, and time to discharge. RESULTS: A total of 272,032 patient visits and 36 ED physicians were included. The mean admission rate decreased 6.8%; the mean time to admission decreased 43.8 minutes; and the mean time to discharge decreased 40.6 minutes. Variation among physicians decreased for admission rate, time to admission, and time to discharge. Low-performing outliers showed disproportionately larger improvements in patients per hour, admission rate, time to admission, and time to discharge. CONCLUSIONS: Automated peer comparison reports for academic emergency physicians was associated with lower admission rates, shorter times to admission, and shorter times to discharge at the departmental level, as well as decreased practice variation at the individual level.

Study protocol for the ACT response pilot intervention: development, implementation and evaluation of a systems-based Agitation Code Team (ACT) in the emergency department.

INTRODUCTION: Emergency department (ED) visits for behavioural conditions are rising, with 1.7 million associated episodes of patient agitation occurring annually in acute care settings. When de-escalation techniques fail during agitation management, patients are subject to use of physical restraints and sedatives, which are associated with up to 37% risk of hypotension, apnoea and physical injuries. At the same time, ED staff report workplace violence due to physical assaults during agitation events. We recently developed a theoretical framework to characterise ED agitation, which identified teamwork as a critical component to reduce harm. Currently, no structured team response protocol for ED agitation addressing both patient and staff safety exists. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: Our proposed study aims to develop and implement the agitation code team (ACT) response intervention, which will consist of a standardised, structured process with defined health worker roles/responsibilities, work processes and clinical protocols. First, we will develop the ACT response intervention in a two-step design loop; conceptual design will engage users in the creation of the prototype, and iterative refinement will occur through in situ simulated agitated patient encounters in the ED to assess and improve the design. Next, we will pilot the intervention in the clinical environment and use a controlled interrupted time series design to evaluate its effect on our primary outcome of patient restraint use. The intervention will be considered efficacious if we effectively lower the rate of restraint use over a 6-month period. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethical approval by the Yale University Human Investigation Committee was obtained in 2019 (HIC #2000025113). Results will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications and presentations at scientific meetings for each phase of the study. If this pilot is successful, we plan to formally integrate the ACT response intervention into clinical workflows at all EDs within our entire health system.

Reducing Unnecessary Blood Chemistry Testing in the Emergency Department: Implementation of Choosing Wisely.

Point of care (POC) laboratory testing is used to improve emergency department (ED) throughput but often overuses resources by duplicating formal laboratory testing. This study sought to evaluate the effect of a multimodal intervention on duplicate chemistry testing. This pre-post analysis included all visits to 2 urban EDs between June 2014 and June 2016. The multimodal intervention including provider education, signage, electronic health record redesign, and audit and feedback focused on reducing duplicate chemistry testing. The primary outcome was the number of duplicate chemistry tests per 100 visits. Autoregressive integrated moving-average models were used to account for secular changes. A total of 299 701 ED visits were included. The daily number of duplicate chemistry and POC chemistry tests significantly decreased following the intervention (3.3 fewer duplicates and 10.2 fewer POC per 100 ED visits, P < .0001). This implementation of a multimodal quality improvement intervention yielded substantial reductions in the overuse of blood chemistry testing in the ED.