A Framework for Quality Assurance of Pediatric Revisits to the Emergency Department.

BACKGROUND: Emergency department return visits significantly impact medical costs and patient flow. A comprehensive approach to understanding these patients is required to identify deficits in care, system level inefficiencies, and improve diagnosis specific management protocols. We aimed to identify factors needed to successfully analyze return visits to explore root causes leading to unplanned returns and inform system-level improvements. METHODS: A multidisciplinary committee collaborated to develop a quality review process for return visits within 72 hours to our pediatric emergency department that were then subsequently admitted to the hospital. The committee developed methodology and a web-based tool for chart review and analysis. RESULTS: Of 197,076 ED visits (159,164 discharged at initial visit), 5390 (3.4%) patients were discharged and represented to the ED within 72 hours and 1658 (1.0%) of those resulted in admission. Using defined criteria, approximately one third (n = 564) of revisits with admission were identified for chart review. Reason for revisit included natural progression of disease (67.6%), new condition or problem (11.2%), diagnostic error (6.9%), and scheduled or planned readmissions (3.5%). All diagnostic errors had not been previously identified by ED leadership. Of the reviewed cases, most were not preventable (84.0%); however, a number of system-level actions resulted from discussion of the potentially preventable revisits. CONCLUSIONS: Seventy-two-hour ED revisits were efficiently and systematically categorized with determination of root causes and preventability. This process resulted in shared provider-level feedback, identifying trends in revisits, and implementation of system-level actions, therefore, encouraging other institutions to adopt a similar process.

Two-Step Process for ED UTI Screening in Febrile Young Children: Reducing Catheterization Rates.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Urinary tract infection (UTI) screening in febrile young children can be painful and time consuming. We implemented a screening protocol for UTI in a high-volume pediatric emergency department (ED) to reduce urethral catheterization, limiting catheterization to children with positive screens from urine bag specimens. METHODS: This quality-improvement initiative was implemented using 3 Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles, beginning with a small test of the proposed change in 1 ED area. To ensure appropriate patients received timely screening, care teams discussed patient risk factors and created patient-specific, appropriate procedures. The intervention was extended to the entire ED after providing education. Finally, visual cues were added into the electronic health record, and nursing scripts were developed to enlist family participation. A time-series design was used to study the impact of the 6-month intervention by using a p-chart to determine special cause variation. The primary outcome measure for the study was defined as the catheterization rate in febrile children ages 6 to 24 months. RESULTS: The ED reduced catheterization rates among febrile young children from 63% to <30% over a 6-month period with sustained results. More than 350 patients were spared catheterization without prolonging ED length of stay. Additionally, there was no change in the revisit rate or missed UTIs among those followed within the hospital's network. CONCLUSIONS: A 2-step less-invasive process for screening febrile young children for UTI can be instituted in a high-volume ED without increasing length of stay or missing cases of UTI.