Surfactant use for premature infants with respiratory distress syndrome in three New York city hospitals: discordance of practice from a community clinician consensus standard.

OBJECTIVE: To assess concordance with a locally developed standard of care for premature infants with respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) for whom the standard recommends surfactant treatment within 2 h of birth, and to examine the association between clinical, demographic, and hospital characteristics with discordance from the standard. STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study of 773 infants weighing < or =1750 g born in any of the three New York City hospitals between 1999 and 2002. RESULT: 227 of the 773 infants (29%) met criteria for treatment according to the standard. Of these, 37% received surfactant by 2 h. By 4 h, 70% of infants who met the standard received surfactant. White infants were more likely to receive surfactant by 4 h (85%) than African American (61%) or Latino infants (67%). Multivariable logistic regression revealed significant odds ratios predicting discordance from the relaxed criteria (4 h) for African American race (4.10, 95% confidence interval: 1.30 to 13.00), 100 g of birth weight (odds ratio: 1.22, 95% confidence interval: 1.10 to 1.34), and hospital of birth. CONCLUSION: Many infants with RDS failed to receive surfactant replacement therapy at 2 and 4 h after birth. African Americans and those born larger were less likely to receive surfactant. If these data can be generalized, there is a large opportunity to reduce infant morbidity from RDS and to reduce racial/ethnic disparities in birth outcomes by increasing the rate and speed with which surfactant is delivered to these infants.

Minor head injury in children: current management practices of pediatricians, emergency physicians, and family physicians.

OBJECTIVE: To describe variation in the clinical management of minor head trauma in children among primary care and emergency physicians. DESIGN: A survey of pediatricians, family physicians, and emergency physicians drawn from a random sample of members of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the appropriate American Medical Association specialty listings, respectively. Physicians were given clinical vignettes describing children presenting with normal physical examination results after minor head trauma. Different clinical scenarios (brief loss of consciousness or seizures) were also presented. Information was gathered on initial and subsequent management steps most commonly used by the physician. RESULTS: Surveys were returned by 765 (51%) of 1500 physicians. Of these, 303 (40%) were pediatricians, 269 (35%) family practitioners, and 193 (25%) emergency physicians. For minor head trauma without complications, observation at home was the most common initial physician management choice (n = 547, 72%). Observation in office or hospital was chosen by 81 physicians (11%). Head computed tomographic (CT) scan was chosen by 7 physicians (1%) and skull x-ray by 24 physicians (3%) as the first management option. Most physicians (n = 445, 80%) who initially chose observation at home would obtain a CT scan if the patient showed clinical deterioration. In the original scenario, if the patient had also sustained a loss of consciousness, 383 physicians (58%) altered management. Of these, 120 (18%) chose CT, 13 (2%) chose skull x-ray, 1 (1%) chose magnetic resonance imaging, 141 (21%) chose inpatient observation, and 125 (19%) chose a combination of CT scanning and observation. With seizures, 595 (90%) altered management, with 176 physicians (27%) choosing CT scan, 5 (1%) skull x-ray, 60 (9%) inpatient observation, and 299 (45%) a combination of radiological evaluation and observation. CONCLUSIONS: Most physicians surveyed chose clinic or home observation for initial management of minor pediatric head trauma. Clinical management was more varied when patients had sustained either loss of consciousness or seizures. Further study of the appropriate management of minor head trauma in children is needed to guide physicians in their care.

Improving the quality of care for children in health systems.

OBJECTIVE: To summarize the state of the art in quality improvement, review its application to care for children, and define the information that will be needed so that care for children can be further improved. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Health services for children exhibit numerous deficiencies in quality of care. The deficiencies cross all major domains of pediatric care--preventive services, acute care, and chronic care--and provide the opportunity for creative application of improvement strategies with a potential to benefit the health and well-being of children. Approaches to quality improvement have changed over the past two decades from those emphasizing the inspection of structural aspects of care and the imposition of sanctions to more dynamic strategies that emphasize measurement and comparison to motivate change; the use of evidence to specify aims for improvement; and the adoption of a variety of management strategies adapted from business and the social sciences to achieve these aims. These modern approaches to quality improvement have rarely been subjected to rigorous testing of their effectiveness. Moreover, their application in pediatrics has been less widespread than in adult healthcare. For children, several aspects about health services, such as the relative rarity of chronic illness, the important effects of social factors on health, and the limited cost, make some of these approaches even more challenging and may require new approaches or meaningful modifications. RECOMMENDATIONS: Research to understand better the general process of improvement will benefit improvement efforts for children. Research that builds the base of knowledge about best practices for children--effectiveness research--will also result in an enhanced capacity for improvement of those systems that care for children's health. Quality of care for children would be enhanced by targeted research examining ways both to foster improvement across segments of society, and to make recommendations for care more sensitive to children's development and environmental context. Research that supports incorporating the child's perspective into care is both uniquely challenging to perform and central to improving pediatric care.

Prevention and primary care research for children. The need for evidence to precede "evidence-based".

Medical care in the United States continues to face tremendous financial pressures. Public and private health policy claim to encourage primary care and preventive services, but also discourage services that have not been demonstrated to be effective and/or cost-effective. This article suggests a model to illustrate the conceptual relationship between traditional American medical care and "evidenced-based" medicine. It further examines how the lack of an adequate research base makes a move to purely evidence-based care premature for primary care and prevention services. The paper defines a new conceptual statistic, the uncertainty index, as the proportion of non-refuted current practice that is also not corroborated by research evidence. The greater the uncertainty index, the less appropriate is a clinical model restricted to evidence-based care. Specific theoretical barriers to outcomes research in prevention are discussed and simple criteria to determine the desirable components of care are suggested. The need for theoretical and empirical research into primary care and prevention, especially for children, is emphasized. Care that is of low risk, not of extremely high cost, and that is generally believed useful by the community of practitioners is particularly desirable in the absence of data refuting its value.

Adherence to prescribed explicit criteria during utilization review. An analysis of communications between attending and reviewing physicians.

CONTEXT: Utilization review (UR) seeks to improve quality and cost-efficiency of health care. However, how well the process works in practice has not been assessed. OBJECTIVE: To describe the outcomes of a sample of physician reviews in terms of the explicit criteria that the UR was designed to implement. DESIGN: Retrospective analysis of transcripts of precertification reviews. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: California physicians employed by a UR firm conducted 96 interviews from April 1990 to July 1991 with attending physicians who had proposed to insert tympanostomy tubes on a patient younger than 16 years and whose proposals had been found to be inappropriate on an initial screen. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The appropriateness rating assigned to each case by the physician-reviewer and by the investigators using explicit criteria. Logistic regression identified factors associated with the reviewers' recommendations to perform surgery and with recommendations at variance from the criteria. RESULTS: The reviewers recommended 78% of cases for surgery, of which only 29% were supported by the criteria or had extenuating circumstances. The criteria concurred with all 30 of the reviewers' recommendations against surgery. Two factors, female sex (odds ratio [OR], 8.2; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.2-53.8) and previous tympanostomy tube insertion (OR, 30.9; 95% CI, 2.4-394.8) were associated with reviewer recommendations in favor of surgery that were at variance from the criteria, despite the lack of evidence for either as a mitigating circumstance. CONCLUSION: Physician reviewers were more lenient than the explicit criteria that the reviews were designed to implement. In no cases did the reviewers depart from the criteria's recommendations in favor of surgery.

Homing in on the homeless: assessing the physical health of homeless adults in Los Angeles County using an original method to obtain physical examination data in a survey.

OBJECTIVE: Public policy that decreases the finding for social services may combine with the ascendancy of corporate managed care to increase the health care deficit. Assessing the health impact of these policy changes on various populations is a fundamental challenge for health services research. Disadvantaged populations, such as the homeless, are likely to be affected disproportionately. Research quality data on the physical health of such populations are difficult and expensive to obtain. In particular, physical examination data have not been available and self-reports are insufficient. Our objective: to develop and utilize a structured physical exam system enabling lay survey researchers to report reliably physical findings related to six tracer conditions in a disadvantaged population. STUDY SETTING: A field survey of homeless adults in Los Angeles County, California. Respondents were 363 homeless adults representing a subsample of a probability sample of the county's homeless adult population. STUDY DESIGN: We integrated existing measures with expert clinical opinion and original means of data collection into a structured physical exam enabling lay interviewers to identify the prevalence of vision problems, significant skin disorders, peripheral vascular disease of the lower extremities, selected podiatric disorders, hypertension, and tuberculosis in a sample of homeless adults. PRINCIPAL MEASURES: We describe lay interviewer performance in terms of mastery of the necessary material based on written and practical exams and in terms of the number of respondents successfully followed. We base our description of the instrument on the time necessary to complete it, and on the proportion of each component successfully completed during the field survey, as well as on interrater reliability. We report the prevalence of the various clinical conditions according to self-report and according to the structured limited physical exam, as well as the marginal proportion of respondents who were identified by the physical exam and not by self-report. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Interviewers performed the exam successfully under field conditions. Respondent acceptance of the instrument was high. Interrater agreement was 100 percent regarding the need for referral on the basis of blood pressure and vision. Kappa statistics for skin, foot, and edema findings were .67,.71, and .81, respectively. Adjusted for sampling weights, 60 percent of this population required referral for at least one of the specified conditions. For those portions of the survey for which both self-report and physical exam data were available, lay interviewers made significant percentages of referrals on the basis of physical findings alone. CONCLUSIONS: High blood pressure, poor vision, peripheral vascular diseases of the feet and legs, and significant skin conditions are prevalent among the homeless in Los Angeles County. Without physical exam data, estimates of the prevalence of these conditions will be incorrect. Researchers can use laypersons to collect reliable and valid physical exam data on disadvantaged populations. This represents a new tool for assessing and monitoring the health of these populations.

The medical appropriateness of tympanostomy tubes proposed for children younger than 16 years in the United States.

OBJECTIVE: To describe the clinical reasons tympanostomy tubes are proposed for children and to assess their appropriateness. DESIGN: Analysis of data previously collected prospectively by a national utilization review (UR) firm during a two-step UR process to assess the medical appropriateness of tympanostomy tube placement. Nurses interviewed otolaryngologists' and primary care physicians' office staff to collect clinical data. For a randomly selected subsample of cases found inappropriate, we reviewed subsequent interviews of the otolaryngologists by physician reviewers, who looked for possible extenuating clinical circumstances or additional clinical data that might have changed the appropriateness category. SETTING: Otolaryngologists' practices from 49 states and the District of Columbia. PATIENTS: All 6611 children younger than 16 years who were insured by three clients of the UR firm and whose proposal to receive tympanostomy tubes were reviewed by this system from January 1, 1990, through July 31, 1991. The insurance companies in the study insured 5.6 million Americans at the time of the study. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: The medical appropriateness of tympanostomy tube surgery according to explicit criteria developed by an expert panel using the RAND/University of California-Los Angeles modified Delphi method. RESULTS: A total of 6429 (97%) of the cases were proposed for recurrent acute otitis media, otitis media with effusion, or both. Making generous clinical assumptions, 41% of the proposals for these reasons had appropriate indications, 32% had equivocal indications, and 27% had inappropriate ones. Considering the additional information available from the subsample review, the proportion appropriate was 42%, equivocal 35%, and inappropriate 23%. CONCLUSION: About one quarter of tympanostomy tube insertions for children in this study were proposed for inappropriate indications and another third for equivocal ones.