Identifying multi-resolution clusters of diseases in ten million patients with multimorbidity in primary care in England.

BACKGROUND: Identifying clusters of diseases may aid understanding of shared aetiology, management of co-morbidities, and the discovery of new disease associations. Our study aims to identify disease clusters using a large set of long-term conditions and comparing methods that use the co-occurrence of diseases versus methods that use the sequence of disease development in a person over time. METHODS: We use electronic health records from over ten million people with multimorbidity registered to primary care in England. First, we extract data-driven representations of 212 diseases from patient records employing (i) co-occurrence-based methods and (ii) sequence-based natural language processing methods. Second, we apply the graph-based Markov Multiscale Community Detection (MMCD) to identify clusters based on disease similarity at multiple resolutions. We evaluate the representations and clusters using a clinically curated set of 253 known disease association pairs, and qualitatively assess the interpretability of the clusters. RESULTS: Both co-occurrence and sequence-based algorithms generate interpretable disease representations, with the best performance from the skip-gram algorithm. MMCD outperforms k-means and hierarchical clustering in explaining known disease associations. We find that diseases display an almost-hierarchical structure across resolutions from closely to more loosely similar co-occurrence patterns and identify interpretable clusters corresponding to both established and novel patterns. CONCLUSIONS: Our method provides a tool for clustering diseases at different levels of resolution from co-occurrence patterns in high-dimensional electronic health records, which could be used to facilitate discovery of associations between diseases in the future.

Having multiple long-term conditions is linked to worse health, poorer quality of life, and difficulties accessing healthcare. Identifying groups, or 'clusters' of diseases that are more likely to occur together in one person may help healthcare services to better meet the needs of those with multiple conditions. Our study aims to identify clusters of similar diseases, based not only on the diseases someone has now, but on the order in which they developed them. We compare a range of methods and find that our strategy performs best at explaining diseases that are already known to be linked, whilst also identifying new clusters of diseases. These methods could be used in future to better understand how diseases occur together, which could help the design of more efficient healthcare services.

Comparing natural language processing representations of coded disease sequences for prediction in electronic health records.

OBJECTIVE: Natural language processing (NLP) algorithms are increasingly being applied to obtain unsupervised representations of electronic health record (EHR) data, but their comparative performance at predicting clinical endpoints remains unclear. Our objective was to compare the performance of unsupervised representations of sequences of disease codes generated by bag-of-words versus sequence-based NLP algorithms at predicting clinically relevant outcomes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This cohort study used primary care EHRs from 6 286 233 people with Multiple Long-Term Conditions in England. For each patient, an unsupervised vector representation of their time-ordered sequences of diseases was generated using 2 input strategies (212 disease categories versus 9462 diagnostic codes) and different NLP algorithms (Latent Dirichlet Allocation, doc2vec, and 2 transformer models designed for EHRs). We also developed a transformer architecture, named EHR-BERT, incorporating sociodemographic information. We compared the performance of each of these representations (without fine-tuning) as inputs into a logistic classifier to predict 1-year mortality, healthcare use, and new disease diagnosis. RESULTS: Patient representations generated by sequence-based algorithms performed consistently better than bag-of-words methods in predicting clinical endpoints, with the highest performance for EHR-BERT across all tasks, although the absolute improvement was small. Representations generated using disease categories perform similarly to those using diagnostic codes as inputs, suggesting models can equally manage smaller or larger vocabularies for prediction of these outcomes. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Patient representations produced by sequence-based NLP algorithms from sequences of disease codes demonstrate improved predictive content for patient outcomes compared with representations generated by co-occurrence-based algorithms. This suggests transformer models may be useful for generating multi-purpose representations, even without fine-tuning.

Assigning disease clusters to people: A cohort study of the implications for understanding health outcomes in people with multiple long-term conditions.

Background: Identifying clusters of co-occurring diseases may help characterise distinct phenotypes of Multiple Long-Term Conditions (MLTC). Understanding the associations of disease clusters with health-related outcomes requires a strategy to assign clusters to people, but it is unclear how the performance of strategies compare. Aims: First, to compare the performance of methods of assigning disease clusters to people at explaining mortality, emergency department attendances and hospital admissions over one year. Second, to identify the extent of variation in the associations with each outcome between and within clusters. Methods: We conducted a cohort study of primary care electronic health records in England, including adults with MLTC. Seven strategies were tested to assign patients to fifteen disease clusters representing 212 LTCs, identified from our previous work. We tested the performance of each strategy at explaining associations with the three outcomes over 1 year using logistic regression and compared to a strategy using the individual LTCs. Results: 6,286,233 patients with MLTC were included. Of the seven strategies tested, a strategy assigning the count of conditions within each cluster performed best at explaining all three outcomes but was inferior to using information on the individual LTCs. There was a larger range of effect sizes for the individual LTCs within the same cluster than there was between the clusters. Conclusion: Strategies of assigning clusters of co-occurring diseases to people were less effective at explaining health-related outcomes than a person's individual diseases. Furthermore, clusters did not represent consistent relationships of the LTCs within them, which might limit their application in clinical research.

Effect of timeframes to define long term conditions and sociodemographic factors on prevalence of multimorbidity using disease code frequency in primary care electronic health records: retrospective study.

Objective: To determine the extent to which the choice of timeframe used to define a long term condition affects the prevalence of multimorbidity and whether this varies with sociodemographic factors. Design: Retrospective study of disease code frequency in primary care electronic health records. Data sources: Routinely collected, general practice, electronic health record data from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink Aurum were used. Main outcome measures: Adults (≥18 years) in England who were registered in the database on 1 January 2020 were included. Multimorbidity was defined as the presence of two or more conditions from a set of 212 long term conditions. Multimorbidity prevalence was compared using five definitions. Any disease code recorded in the electronic health records for 212 conditions was used as the reference definition. Additionally, alternative definitions for 41 conditions requiring multiple codes (where a single disease code could indicate an acute condition) or a single code for the remaining 171 conditions were as follows: two codes at least three months apart; two codes at least 12 months apart; three codes within any 12 month period; and any code in the past 12 months. Mixed effects regression was used to calculate the expected change in multimorbidity status and number of long term conditions according to each definition and associations with patient age, gender, ethnic group, and socioeconomic deprivation. Results: 9 718 573 people were included in the study, of whom 7 183 662 (73.9%) met the definition of multimorbidity where a single code was sufficient to define a long term condition. Variation was substantial in the prevalence according to timeframe used, ranging from 41.4% (n=4 023 023) for three codes in any 12 month period, to 55.2% (n=5 366 285) for two codes at least three months apart. Younger people (eg, 50-75% probability for 18-29 years v 1-10% for ≥80 years), people of some minority ethnic groups (eg, people in the Other ethnic group had higher probability than the South Asian ethnic group), and people living in areas of lower socioeconomic deprivation were more likely to be re-classified as not multimorbid when using definitions requiring multiple codes. Conclusions: Choice of timeframe to define long term conditions has a substantial effect on the prevalence of multimorbidity in this nationally representative sample. Different timeframes affect prevalence for some people more than others, highlighting the need to consider the impact of bias in the choice of method when defining multimorbidity.

Treating insomnia in people who are incarcerated: a feasibility study of a multicomponent treatment pathway.

Around 60% of people who are incarcerated have insomnia; 6-10 times more prevalent than the general population. Yet, there is no standardized, evidence-based approach to insomnia treatment in prison. We assessed the feasibility of a treatment pathway for insomnia in a high-secure prison to inform a future randomized controlled trial (RCT) and initial efficacy data for sleep and mental health outcomes. We used a within-participants pre-post design. The stepped-care pathway included: self-management with peer support, environmental aids, and cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBTi). Assessment measures for insomnia, well-being, mood, anxiety, suicidality, overall health, sleepiness, fatigue, and cognitive functioning were administered at baseline and pathway exit. Feasibility criteria included eligibility to participate, CBTi uptake, and assessment completion. Forty-two adult males who are incarcerated were approached of which 95.2% were eligible. Of those deemed eligible, most participated (36/40, 90.0%). Most who completed baseline completed post-assessments (28/36, 77.8%) and of these, most showed improvements in their subjective sleep (27/28, 96.4%). Large reductions were found from pre- to posttreatment in insomnia severity (d = -1.81, 95% CI: 8.3 to 12.9) and 57.0% reported no clinically significant insomnia symptoms at post-assessment. There was no overall change in actigraphy-measured sleep. Large treatment benefits were found for depression, anxiety, well-being, and cognitive functioning, with a medium benefit on suicidal ideation. The treatment pathway for insomnia in prison was feasible and may be an effective treatment for insomnia in people who are incarcerated, with additional promising benefits for mental health. A pragmatic RCT across different prison populations is warranted. This paper is part of the Sleep and Circadian Health in the Justice System Collection.

Effect of implementing a heart failure admission care bundle on hospital readmission and mortality rates: interrupted time series study.

This study aimed to evaluate the impact of developing and implementing a care bundle intervention to improve care for patients with acute heart failure admitted to a large London hospital. The intervention comprised three elements, targeted within 24 hours of admission: N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) test, transthoracic Doppler two-dimensional echocardiography and specialist review by cardiology team. The SHIFT-Evidence approach to quality improvement was used. During implementation, July 2015-July 2017, 1169 patients received the intervention. An interrupted time series design was used to evaluate impact on patient outcomes, including 15 618 admissions for 8951 patients. Mixed-effects multiple Poisson and log-linear regression models were fitted for count and continuous outcomes, respectively. Effect sizes are slope change ratios pre-intervention and post-intervention. The intervention was associated with reductions in emergency readmissions between 7 and 90 days (0.98, 95% CI 0.97 to 1.00), although not readmissions between 0 and 7 days post-discharge. Improvements were seen in in-hospital mortality (0.96, 95% CI 0.95 to 0.98), and there was no change in trend for hospital length of stay. Care process changes were also evaluated. Compliance with NT-proBNP testing was already high in 2014/2015 (162 of 163, 99.4%) and decreased slightly, with increased numbers audited, to 2016/2017 (1082 of 1101, 98.2%). Over this period, rates of echocardiography (84.7-98.9%) and specialist input (51.6-90.4%) improved. Care quality and outcomes can be improved for patients with acute heart failure using a care bundle approach. A systematic approach to quality improvement, and robust evaluation design, can be beneficial in supporting successful improvement and learning.

Identifying potential biases in code sequences in primary care electronic healthcare records: a retrospective cohort study of the determinants of code frequency.

OBJECTIVES: To determine whether the frequency of diagnostic codes for long-term conditions (LTCs) in primary care electronic healthcare records (EHRs) is associated with (1) disease coding incentives, (2) General Practice (GP), (3) patient sociodemographic characteristics and (4) calendar year of diagnosis. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study. SETTING: GPs in England from 2015 to 2022 contributing to the Clinical Practice Research Datalink Aurum dataset. PARTICIPANTS: All patients registered to a GP with at least one incident LTC diagnosed between 1 January 2015 and 31 December 2019. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: The number of diagnostic codes for an LTC in (1) the first and (2) the second year following diagnosis, stratified by inclusion in the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) financial incentive programme. RESULTS: 3 113 724 patients were included, with 7 723 365 incident LTCs. Conditions included in QOF had higher rates of annual coding than conditions not included in QOF (1.03 vs 0.32 per year, p<0.0001). There was significant variation in code frequency by GP which was not explained by patient sociodemographics. We found significant associations with patient sociodemographics, with a trend towards higher coding rates in people living in areas of higher deprivation for both QOF and non-QOF conditions. Code frequency was lower for conditions with follow-up time in 2020, associated with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. CONCLUSIONS: The frequency of diagnostic codes for newly diagnosed LTCs is influenced by factors including patient sociodemographics, disease inclusion in QOF, GP practice and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Natural language processing or other methods using temporally ordered code sequences should account for these factors to minimise potential bias.

Characteristics associated with influenza vaccination uptake in pregnancy: a retrospective cohort study.

BACKGROUND: Pregnant women are at increased risk from influenza, yet maternal influenza vaccination levels remain suboptimal. AIM: To estimate associations between sociodemographic and health characteristics and seasonal influenza vaccination uptake among pregnant women, and to understand trends over time to inform interventions to improve vaccine coverage. DESIGN AND SETTING: Retrospective cohort study using linked electronic health records of women in North West London with a pregnancy overlapping an influenza season between September 2010 and February 2020. METHOD: A multivariable mixed-effects logistic regression model was used to identify associations between characteristics of interest and the primary outcome of influenza vaccination. RESULTS: In total, 451 954 pregnancies, among 260 744 women, were included. In 85 376 (18.9%) pregnancies women were vaccinated against seasonal influenza. Uptake increased from 8.4% in 2010/11 to 26.4% in 2017/18, dropping again to 21.1% in 2019/20. Uptake was lowest among women aged 15-19 years (11.9%; reference category) or ≥40 years (15.2%; odds ratio [OR] 1.17, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.10 to 1.24); of Black (14.1%; OR 0.55, 95% CI = 0.53 to 0.57) or unknown ethnicity (9.9%; OR 0.42, 95% CI = 0.39 to 0.46); who lived in more deprived areas (OR least versus most deprived [reference category] 1.16, 95% CI = 1.11 to 1.21); or with no known risk factors for severe influenza. CONCLUSION: Seasonal influenza vaccine uptake in pregnant women increased in the decade before the COVID-19 pandemic, but remained suboptimal. Targeted approaches are recommended to reducing inequalities in access to vaccination and should focus on women of Black ethnicity, younger and older women, and women living in deprived areas.

Patient outcomes following emergency admission to hospital for COVID-19 compared with influenza: retrospective cohort study.

BACKGROUND: We examine differences in posthospitalisation outcomes, and health system resource use, for patients hospitalised with COVID-19 during the UK's first pandemic wave in 2020, and influenza during 2018 and 2019. METHODS: This retrospective cohort study used routinely collected primary and secondary care data. Outcomes, measured for 90 days follow-up after discharge were length of stay in hospital, mortality, emergency readmission and primary care activity. RESULTS: The study included 5132 patients admitted to hospital as an emergency, with COVID-19 and influenza cohorts comprising 3799 and 1333 patients respectively. Patients in the COVID-19 cohort were more likely to stay in hospital longer than 10 days (OR 3.91, 95% CI 3.14 to 4.65); and more likely to die in hospital (OR 11.85, 95% CI 8.58 to 16.86) and within 90 days of discharge (OR 7.92, 95% CI 6.20 to 10.25). For those who survived, rates of emergency readmission within 90 days were comparable between COVID-19 and influenza cohorts (OR 1.07, 95% CI 0.89 to 1.29), while primary care activity was greater among the COVID-19 cohort (incidence rate ratio 1.30, 95% CI 1.23 to 1.37). CONCLUSIONS: Patients admitted for COVID-19 were more likely to die, more likely to stay in hospital for over 10 days and interact more with primary care after discharge, than patients admitted for influenza. However, readmission rates were similar for both groups. These findings, while situated in the context of the first wave of COVID-19, with the associated pressures on the health system, can inform health service planning for subsequent waves of COVID-19, and show that patients with COVID-19 interact more with healthcare services as well as having poorer outcomes than those with influenza.

Grand rounds in methodology: four critical decision points in statistical process control evaluations of quality improvement initiatives.

Quality improvement (QI) projects often employ statistical process control (SPC) charts to monitor process or outcome measures as part of ongoing feedback, to inform successive Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles and refine the intervention (formative evaluation). SPC charts can also be used to draw inferences on effectiveness and generalisability of improvement efforts (summative evaluation), but only if appropriately designed and meeting specific methodological requirements for generalisability. Inadequate design decreases the validity of results, which not only reduces the chance of publication but could also result in patient harm and wasted resources if incorrect conclusions are drawn. This paper aims to bring together much of what has been written in various tutorials, to suggest a process for using SPC in QI projects. We highlight four critical decision points that are often missed, how these are inter-related and how they affect the inferences that can be drawn regarding effectiveness of the intervention: (1) the need for a stable baseline to enable drawing inferences on effectiveness; (2) choice of outcome measures to assess effectiveness, safety and intervention fidelity; (3) design features to improve the quality of QI projects; (4) choice of SPC analysis aligned with the type of outcome, and reporting on the potential influence of other interventions or secular trends.These decision points should be explicitly reported for readers to interpret and judge the results, and can be seen as supplementing the Standards for Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence guidelines. Thinking in advance about both formative and summative evaluation will inform more deliberate choices and strengthen the evidence produced by QI projects.

The Association Between Sleep Disturbance and Suicidality in Psychiatric Inpatients Transitioning to the Community: Protocol for an Ecological Momentary Assessment Study.

BACKGROUND: Patients are at high risk of suicidal behavior and death by suicide immediately following discharge from inpatient psychiatric hospitals. Furthermore, there is a high prevalence of sleep problems in inpatient settings, which is associated with worse outcomes following hospitalization. However, it is unknown whether poor sleep is associated with suicidality following initial hospital discharge. OBJECTIVE: Our study objective is to describe a protocol for an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study that aims to examine the relationship between sleep and suicidality in discharged patients. METHODS: Our study will use an EMA design based on a wearable device to examine the sleep-suicide relationship during the transition from acute inpatient care to the community. Prospectively discharged inpatients 18 to 35 years old with mental disorders (N=50) will be assessed for eligibility and recruited across 2 sites. Data on suicidal ideation, behavior, and imagery; nonsuicidal self-harm and imagery; defeat, entrapment, and hopelessness; affect; and sleep will be collected on the Pro-Diary V wrist-worn electronic watch for up to 14 days. Objective sleep and daytime activity will be measured using the inbuilt MotionWare software. Questionnaires will be administered face-to-face at baseline and follow up, and data will also be collected on the acceptability and feasibility of using the Pro-Diary V watch to monitor the transition following discharge. The study has been, and will continue to be, coproduced with young people with experience of being in an inpatient setting and suicidality. RESULTS: South Birmingham Research Ethics Committee (21/WM/0128) approved the study on June 28, 2021. We expect to see a relationship between poor sleep and postdischarge suicidality. Results will be available in 2022. CONCLUSIONS: This protocol describes the first coproduced EMA study to examine the relationship between sleep and suicidality and to apply the integrated motivational volitional model in young patients transitioning from a psychiatric hospital to the community. We expect our findings will inform coproduction in suicidology research and clarify the role of digital monitoring of suicidality and sleep before and after initial hospital discharge. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): PRR1-10.2196/33817.

To what extent do callers follow the advice given by a non-emergency medical helpline (NHS 111): A retrospective cohort study.

National Health Service (NHS) 111 helpline was set up to improve access to urgent care in England, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of first-contact health services. Following trusted, authoritative advice is crucial for improved clinical outcomes. We examine patient and call-related characteristics associated with compliance with advice given in NHS 111 calls. The importance of health interactions that are not face-to-face has recently been highlighted by COVID-19 pandemic. In this retrospective cohort study, NHS 111 call records were linked to urgent and emergency care services data. We analysed data of 3,864,362 calls made between October 2013 and September 2017 relating to 1,964,726 callers across London. A multiple logistic regression was used to investigate associations between compliance with advice given and patient and call characteristics. Caller's action is 'compliant with advice given if first subsequent service interaction following contact with NHS 111 is consistent with advice given. We found that most calls were made by women (58%), adults aged 30-59 years (33%) and people in the white ethnic category (36%). The most common advice was for caller to contact their General Practitioner (GP) or other local services (18.2%) with varying times scales. Overall, callers followed advice given in 49% of calls. Compliance with triage advice was more likely in calls for children aged <16 years, women, those from Asian/Asian British ethnicity, and calls made out of hours. The highest compliance was among callers advised to self-care without the need to contact any other healthcare service. This is one of the largest studies to describe pathway adherence following telephone advice and associated clinical and demographic features. These results could inform attempts to improve caller compliance with advice given by NHS 111, and as the NHS moves to more hybrid way of working, the lessons from this study are key to the development of remote healthcare services going forward.

Factors associated with accessing long-term adult social care in people aged 75 and over: a retrospective cohort study.

BACKGROUND: An ageing population and limited resources have put strain on state provision of adult social care (ASC) in England. With social care needs predicted to double over the next 20 years, there is a need for new approaches to inform service planning and development, including through predictive models of demand. OBJECTIVE: Describe risk factors for long-term ASC in two inner London boroughs and develop a risk prediction model for long-term ASC. METHODS: Pseudonymised person-level data from an integrated care dataset were analysed. We used multivariable logistic regression to model associations of demographic factors, and baseline aspects of health status and health service use, with accessing long-term ASC over 12 months. RESULTS: The cohort comprised 13,394 residents, aged ≥75 years with no prior history of ASC at baseline. Of these, 1.7% became ASC clients over 12 months. Residents were more likely to access ASC if they were older or living in areas with high socioeconomic deprivation. Those with preexisting mental health or neurological conditions, or more intense prior health service use during the baseline period, were also more likely to access ASC. A prognostic model derived from risk factors had limited predictive power. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings reinforce evidence on known risk factors for residents aged 75 or over, yet even with linked routinely collected health and social care data, it was not possible to make accurate predictions of long-term ASC use for individuals. We propose that a paradigm shift towards more relational, personalised approaches, is needed.

Measuring with quality: the example of person-centred care.

Qualitative data analysis should be embedded in routine health service measurement, management and organizational practices. The rigorous use of such analyses should become an institutional norm, comparable to the routine use of quantitative data. Our case is intended to have general relevance, but we develop it by reference to person-centred care and patient-centred outcome measures (PCOMs). The increased use of qualitative data analysis of individualized PCOMs is a crucial complementary counterweight to steps towards the standardization of PCOMs. More broadly, our argument is that health care organizations cannot make confident judgements about whether they are offering appropriate care without collecting qualitative data on what matters to individual patients. Introducing properly supported and conducted qualitative data analyses is important in its own right, and also helps underpin the validity and usefulness of quantitative measurement.

Patterns of healthcare utilisation in children and young people: a retrospective cohort study using routinely collected healthcare data in Northwest London.

OBJECTIVES: With a growing role for health services in managing population health, there is a need for early identification of populations with high need. Segmentation approaches partition the population based on demographics, long-term conditions (LTCs) or healthcare utilisation but have mostly been applied to adults. Our study uses segmentation methods to distinguish patterns of healthcare utilisation in children and young people (CYP) and to explore predictors of segment membership. DESIGN: A retrospective cohort study. SETTING: Routinely collected primary and secondary healthcare data in Northwest London from the Discover database. PARTICIPANTS: 378 309 CYP aged 0-15 years registered to a general practice in Northwest London with 1 full year of follow-up. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Assignment of each participant to a segment defined by seven healthcare variables representing primary and secondary care attendances, and description of utilisation patterns by segment. Predictors of segment membership described by age, sex, ethnicity, deprivation and LTCs. RESULTS: Participants were grouped into six segments based on healthcare utilisation. Three segments predominantly used primary care, two moderate utilisation segments differed in use of emergency or elective care, and a high utilisation segment, representing 16 632 (4.4%) children accounted for the highest mean presentations across all service types. The two smallest segments, representing 13.3% of the population, accounted for 62.5% of total costs. Younger age, residence in areas of higher deprivation and the presence of one or more LTCs were associated with membership of higher utilisation segments, but 75.0% of those in the highest utilisation segment had no LTC. CONCLUSIONS: This article identifies six segments of healthcare utilisation in CYP and predictors of segment membership. Demographics and LTCs may not explain utilisation patterns as strongly as in adults, which may limit the use of routine data in predicting utilisation and suggest children have less well-defined trajectories of service use than adults.

Advances in the Starling Principle and Microvascular Fluid Exchange; Consequences and Implications for Fluid Therapy.

Ernest Starling first presented a hypothesis about the absorption of tissue fluid to the plasma within tissue capillaries in 1896. In this Chapter we trace the evolution of Starling's hypothesis to a principle and an equation, and then look in more detail at the extension of the Starling principle in recent years. In 2012 Thomas Woodcock and his son proposed that experience and experimental observations surrounding clinical practices involving the administration of intravenous fluids were better explained by the revised Starling principle. In particular, the revised or extended Starling principle can explain why crystalloid resuscitation from the abrupt physiologic insult of hypovolaemia is much more effective than the pre-revision Starling principle had led clinicians to expect. The authors of this chapter have since combined their science and clinical expertise to offer clinicians a better basis for their practice of rational fluid therapy.

Hospital admissions for stroke and bleeding in Hounslow following a quality improvement initiative.

OBJECTIVE: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common arrhythmia. Undiagnosed and poorly managed AF increases risk of stroke. The Hounslow AF quality improvement (QI) initiative was associated with improved quality of care for patients with AF through increased detection of AF and appropriate anticoagulation. This study aimed to evaluate whether there has been a change in stroke and bleeding rates in the Hounslow population following the QI initiative. METHODS: Using hospital admissions data from January 2011 to August 2018, interrupted time series analysis was performed to investigate the changes in standardised rates of admission with stroke and bleeding, following the start of the QI initiative in October 2014. RESULTS: There was a 17% decrease in the rate of admission with stroke as primary diagnosis (incidence rate ratio (IRR) 0.83; 95% CI 0.712 to 0.963; p<0.014). There was an even larger yet not statistically significant decrease in admission with stroke as primary diagnosis and AF as secondary diagnosis (IRR 0.75; 95% CI 0.550 to 1.025; p<0.071). No significant changes were observed in bleeding admissions. For each outcome, an additional regression model including both the level change and an interaction term for slope change was created. In all cases, the slope change was small and not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: Reduction in stroke admissions may be associated with the AF QI initiative. However, the immediate level change and non-significant slope change suggests a lack of effect of the intervention over time and that the decrease observed may be attributable to other events.

A mixed-methods study of challenges experienced by clinical teams in measuring improvement.

OBJECTIVE: Measurement is an indispensable element of most quality improvement (QI) projects, but it is undertaken to variable standards. We aimed to characterise challenges faced by clinical teams in undertaking measurement in the context of a safety QI programme that encouraged local selection of measures. METHODS: Drawing on an independent evaluation of a multisite improvement programme (Safer Clinical Systems), we combined a qualitative study of participating teams' experiences and perceptions of measurement with expert review of measurement plans and analysis of data collected for the programme. Multidisciplinary teams of frontline clinicians at nine UK NHS sites took part across the two phases of the programme between 2011 and 2016. RESULTS: Developing and implementing a measurement plan against which to assess their improvement goals was an arduous task for participating sites. The operational definitions of the measures that they selected were often imprecise or missed important details. Some measures used by the teams were not logically linked to the improvement actions they implemented. Regardless of the specific type of data used (routinely collected or selected ex novo), the burdensome nature of data collection was underestimated. Problems also emerged in identifying and using suitable analytical approaches. CONCLUSION: Measurement is a highly technical task requiring a degree of expertise. Simply leveraging individual clinicians' motivation is unlikely to defeat the persistent difficulties experienced by clinical teams when attempting to measure their improvement efforts. We suggest that more structural initiatives and broader capability-building programmes should be pursued by the professional community. Improving access to, and ability to use repositories of validated measures, and increasing transparency in reporting measurement attempts, is likely to be helpful.