Co-design of interventions to improve acute care in hospital: A rapid review of the literature and application of the BASE methodology, a novel system for the design of patient centered service prototypes

Co-design in acute care is challenged by the inability of unwell patients to participate in the process and the often transient nature of acute care. We undertook a rapid review of the literature on co-design, co-production and co-creation of solutions for acute care that were developed with patients. We found limited little evidence for co-design methods in acute care. We adapted a novel design driven method (BASE methodology) that creates stakeholder groups through epistemological criteria for the rapid development of interventions for acute care. We demonstrated feasibility of the methodology in two case studies: A mHealth application with checklists for patients undergoing treatment for cancer and a patient held record for self-clerking on admission to hospital.

Guest Editorial - Bad NEWS: standing still is risky for patients admitted to hospital (even with normal vital signs)

Acute Physicians care for acutely unwell patients. Recognising and prioritising those at greatest risk of death is therefore at the heart of our specialty. The risk of catastrophic deterioration in the Acute Medical Unit is usually quantified through the measurement of vital signs. These are being summarised into the National Early Warning Score or similar instruments. Those with higher Early Warning Scores are usually prioritised by clinicians in and out of hospital and being seen before those with lower grades of abnormalities and preferably assessed by a more senior clinician.

Acute Medicine: How will we grow? - An analysis of organisational capabilities for quality improvement, research & education from SAMBA 2021

BACKGROUND

Education, research, and Quality Improvement (QI) are key enablers for high quality care. We aimed to map the capability of Acute Medical Units (AMUs) to facilitate excellence in these areas.

METHODS

AMUs were surveyed in an organisational questionnaire within the Society for Acute Medicine Benchmarking Audit 2021.

RESULTS

143 units participated. 80 units had a QI lead, 24 had a research lead and 99 had a medical education lead. 15 units had all three leadership roles. Most QI work considered service structure rather than changes in processes or care outcomes.

CONCLUSION

The organisational capability of AMUs in the strategic areas considered is variable. Improving leadership and disseminating learning could help build a strategic foundation for acute medicine to grow.

Society for Acute Medicine's Patients: Learning from Experience Report (SAM-PLER) A service evaluation of patient reported experience in Acute Medicine - establishing the feasibility of a quality improvement collaborative

Patient reported experience measures (PREMS) are a key part of measured quality. There is no tool currently used in the UK in Acute Medicine. On the 8th of September 2022 10 units based in England, Scotland and Wales collected data for the validated PREM, alongside the EQ-5D and variables from the Society for Acute Medicine's Benchmarking Audit (SAMBA) dataset. 365 patients were screened, 200 were included (55%): 159 patients from AMUs and 41 from SDEC units. Overall experience of patients was rated 8.5/10, patients rated their experience of safety, trust and listening highly. Collection of PREMS was feasible. Further research is required to link experience to clinical outcome and explore tools that capture experience of patients with altered mental status.

Long-term trends in critical care admissions in Wales

As national populations age, demands on critical care services are expected to increase. In many healthcare settings, longitudinal trends indicate rising numbers and proportions of patients admitted to ICU who are older; elsewhere, including some parts of the UK, a decrease has raised concerns with regard to rationing according to age. Our aim was to investigate admission trends in Wales, where critical care capacity has not risen in the last decade. We used the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage Databank to identify and characterise critical care admissions in patients aged ≥ 18 years from 1 January 2008 to 31 December 2017. We categorised 85,629 ICU admissions as youngest (18-64 years), older (65-79 years) and oldest (≥ 80 years). The oldest group accounted for 15% of admissions, the older age group 39% and the youngest group 46%. Relative to the national population, the incidence of admission rates per 10,000 population in the oldest group decreased significantly over the study period from 91.5/10,000 in 2008 to 77.5/10,000 (a relative decrease of 15%), and among the older group from 89.2/10,000 in 2008 to 75.3/10,000 in 2017 (a relative decrease of 16%). We observed significant decreases in admissions with high comorbidity (modified Charlson comorbidity index); increases in the proportion of older patients admitted who were considered 'fit' rather than frail (electronic frailty index); and decreases in admissions with a medical diagnosis. In contrast to other healthcare settings, capacity constraints and surgical imperatives appear to have contributed to a relative exclusion of older patients presenting with acute medical illness.

Quality: What does it mean in Acute Medicine and how do we measure it?

Acute Medicine is a specialty that is not defined by a single organ system and sits at the interface between primary and secondary care. In order to document improvements in the quality of care delivered a system of metrics is required. A number of frameworks for measurements exist to quantify quality of care at the level of patients, teams and organisations, such as measures of population health, patient satisfaction and cost per patient. Measures can capture whether care is safe, effective, patient-centred, timely, efficient and equitable. Measurement in Acute Medicine is challenged by the often-transient nature of the contact between Acute Medicine clinicians and patients, the lack of diagnostic labels, a low degree of standardisation and difficulties in capturing the patient experience in the context. In a time of increasing ecological and financial constraints, reflecting about the most appropriate metrics to document the impact of Acute Medicine is required.

Testing the effects of checklists on team behaviour during emergencies on general wards: An observational study using high-fidelity simulation

INTRODUCTION

Clinical teams struggle on general wards with acute management of deteriorating patients. We hypothesized that the Crisis Checklist App, a mobile application containing checklists tailored to crisis-management, can improve teamwork and acute care management.

METHODS

A before-and-after study was undertaken in high-fidelity simulation centres in the Netherlands, Denmark and United Kingdom. Clinical teams completed three scenarios with a deteriorating patient without checklists followed by three scenarios using the Crisis Checklist App. Teamwork performance as the primary outcome was assessed by the Mayo High Performance Teamwork scale. The secondary outcomes were the time required to complete all predefined safety-critical steps, percentage of omitted safety-critical steps, effects on other non-technical skills, and users' self-assessments. Linear mixed models and a non-parametric survival test were conducted to assess these outcomes.

RESULTS

32 teams completed 188 scenarios. The Mayo High Performance Teamwork scale mean scores improved to 23.4 out of 32 (95% CI: 22.4-24.3) with the Crisis Checklist App compared to 21.4 (20.4-22.3) with local standard of care. The mean difference was 1.97 (1.34-2.6; p < 0.001). Teams that used the checklists were able to complete all safety-critical steps of a scenario in more simulations (40/95 vs 21/93 scenarios) and these steps were completed faster (stratified log-rank test χ² = 8.0; p = 0.005). The self-assessments of the observers and users showed favourable effects after checklist usage for other non-technical skills including situational awareness, decision making, task management and communication.

CONCLUSIONS

Implementation of a novel mobile crisis checklist application among clinical teams was associated in a simulated general ward setting with improved teamwork performance, and a higher and faster completion rate of predetermined safety-critical steps.

Who is allowed to read and write?

What makes us human? In 2015 Jeremy Vine asked this question to a selection of leading British thinkers and writers. The answers were as diverse as the people he interviewed. While you might have your own views about the complexity of being human I would suggest that being able to articulate thoughts and communicate them to others might be one of the characteristics that distinguishes us from other life forms. And if we think more about the achievements of human culture then being able to communicate thoughts in writing and reading other.

Differences in identification of patients' deterioration may hamper the success of clinical escalation protocols

BACKGROUND

Timely and consistent recognition of a 'clinical crisis', a life threatening condition that demands immediate intervention, is essential to reduce 'failure to rescue' rates in general wards.

AIM

To determine how different clinical caregivers define a 'clinical crisis' and how they respond to it.

DESIGN

An international survey.

METHODS

Clinicians working on general wards, intensive care units or emergency departments in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Denmark were asked to review ten scenarios based on common real-life cases. Then they were asked to grade the urgency and severity of the scenario, their degree of concern, their estimate for the risk for death and indicate their preferred action for escalation. The primary outcome was the scenarios with a National Early Warning Score (NEWS) ≥7 considered to be a 'clinical crisis'. Secondary outcomes included how often a rapid response system (RRS) was activated, and if this was influenced by the participant's professional role or experience. The data from all participants in all three countries was pooled for analysis.

RESULTS

A total of 150 clinicians participated in the survey. The highest percentage of clinicians that considered one of the three scenarios with a NEWS ≥7 as a 'clinical crisis' was 52%, while a RRS was activated by <50% of participants. Professional roles and job experience only had a minor influence on the recognition of a 'clinical crisis' and how it should be responded to.

CONCLUSION

This international survey indicates that clinicians differ on what they consider to be a 'clinical crisis' and on how it should be managed. Even in cases with a markedly abnormal physiology (i.e. NEWS ≥7) many clinicians do not consider immediate activation of a RRS is required.

Reliability of frailty assessment in the critically ill: a multicentre prospective observational study

Demand for critical care among older patients is increasing in many countries. Assessment of frailty may inform discussions and decision making, but acute illness and reliance on proxies for history-taking pose particular challenges in patients who are critically ill. Our aim was to investigate the inter-rater reliability of the Clinical Frailty Scale for assessing frailty in patients admitted to critical care. We conducted a prospective, multi-centre study comparing assessments of frailty by staff from medical, nursing and physiotherapy backgrounds. Each assessment was made independently by two assessors after review of clinical notes and interview with an individual who maintained close contact with the patient. Frailty was defined as a Clinical Frailty Scale rating > 4. We made 202 assessments in 101 patients (median (IQR [range]) age 69 (65-75 [60-80]) years, median (IQR [range]) Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II score 19 (15-23 [7-33])). Fifty-two (51%) of the included patients were able to participate in the interview; 35 patients (35%) were considered frail. Linear weighted kappa was 0.74 (95%CI 0.67-0.80) indicating a good level of agreement between assessors. However, frailty rating differed by at least one category in 47 (47%) cases. Factors independently associated with higher frailty ratings were: female sex; higher Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II score; higher category of pre-hospital dependence; and the assessor having a medical background. We identified a good level of agreement in frailty assessment using the Clinical Frailty Scale, supporting its use in clinical care, but identified factors independently associated with higher ratings which could indicate personal bias.

Feasibility of measuring psychological resilience in hospitalized patients with acute illness: The Resilience After the Trauma of Acute Illness (RAFT) study

Resilience is the 'ability to bounce back'. We want to investigate whether measurement of resilience during an acute hospital admission is feasible. We conducted a feasibility study. Resilience was measured using the Brief Resilience Scale. Results were contextualized by measuring chronic disease burden, anxiety, depression, coping strategies and personality traits. 56 or 103 patients approached took part in the study. A group of 12 patients undergoing pulmonary rehabilitation served as a control group. We found evidence of low resilience in 4/44 (9%) patients admitted as medical emergencies. Low resilience was statistically related to the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale and a number of coping strategies and personality traits. We found no relation between measures of resilience and previous admissions to hospital. The concept of resilience might be applicable to unscheduled admissions to hospital. Larger studies are required to establish whether low resilience is common and amenable to intervention. REC number 17/WA/0024.

Using trends in electronic recordings of vital signs to identify patients stable for transfer from acute hospitals

Patients who are stable might not be required to remain in hospital. We aimed to create objective criteria to indicate stability based on vital signs. An index based on NEWS (NBI) was compared to a Patient Stability Index (PSI) algorithm created by random forest analysis. Data from the VITAL II study was used to train the algorithm and data from the VITAL III study to validate it. Failure rate of the algorithms was set close to the rate of readmission to UK hospitals at 15%. After a training period of two days the NBI identified stability with acceptable failure rates only after a further 96 hours with a subsequent release of 2143 bed days compared to the PSI which identified stability after only 12 hours leading to potential earlier release of 2652 bed days. Vital sign-based algorithms might be able to predict safe transfer from hospital and inform management of flow.

Death after Discharge - Every heart beat counts (probably)!

The assumption would be that patients who are discharged from an emergency or acute medicine department have been thoroughly assessed and are good to return to the safety of their own home. An unplanned death after discharge from hospital is the worst-case scenario for patients, families and indeed clinicians. In order to prevent adverse events after patients leave hospital most units have a multi-layered system to capture risk that includes triage, recording of vital signs, basic blood tests, understanding of existing past medical history and assessment by a senior clinician to add experience and intuition. Discharge decisions depend on a balanced review of all these parameters and a discussion with patients about residual risks. Only after this will patients go home. Despite this a small percentage of patients pass away unexpectedly within days after leaving hospital.

Continuous Monitoring of Respiratory Rate on General Wards What might the implications be for Clinical Practice?

A high respiratory rate is a significant predictor of deterioration. The accuracy of measurements has been questioned. We performed a prospective observational study of automated electronic respiratory rate measurements and compared measurements with electronic counts obtained in the 10 minutes prior to the manual measurement. For 182 patients 1331 matching measurements could be compared. The mean age of these patients was 68 (SD 14) years. 96 (53%) of patients were female. While mean and median measurements were similar frequency distributions were significantly different. Manual measurements were markedly lower than electronic measurements in patients with higher respiratory rates. While electronic measurements are likely to be more reliable clinical implications require further investigation to clarify whether existing algorithms including Early Warning Scores will need adjustment.

Changes in vital signs post discharge as a potential target for intervention to avoid readmission

Readmissions are treated as adverse events in many healthcare systems. Causes can be physiological deterioration or breakdown of social support systems. We investigated data from a European multi-centre study of readmissions for changes in vital signs between index admission and readmission. Data sets were graded according to the National Early Warning Score (NEWS). Of 487 patients in whom NEWS could be calculated on discharge and again on re-admission, 39.6% had worse vital signs with a NEWS score difference ≥ 2 points while only 7.6% had improved by ≤ 2 points. Changes in individual vital signs of 20% or more were most common in respiratory rate and heart rate. Monitoring of respiratory rate and pulse rate post-discharge might predict some deteriorations.

Anticipating care needs of patients after discharge from hospital: Frail and elderly patients without physiological abnormality on day of admission are more likely to require social services input

INTRODUCTION

Acute admissions to hospital are rising. As a part of a service evaluation we examined pathways of patients following hospital discharge depending on data available on admission to hospital.

METHODS

We merged data available on admission to the Wrexham Maelor hospital from an existing data-base in the Acute Medical Unit with follow up data from local social services as part of a data sharing agreement. Patients requiring support by social services post-discharge were matched with patients not requiring social services from the same post-code.

RESULTS

Stepwise logistic regression analysis identified candidate variables predicting likely support need. Decision tree analysis identified sub-groups of patients with higher likelihood to require support by social services after discharge from hospital. We found patients with normal physiology on admission as evidenced by a value of zero for the National Early Warning Score who were frail or older than 85years were most likely to require support after discharge.

CONCLUSIONS

Information available on admission to hospital might inform long term care needs. Prospective testing is needed. The algorithms are prone to be dependent on availability of local services but our methodology is expected to be transferable to other organizations.

Physician consensus on preventability and predictability of readmissions based on standard case scenarios

BACKGROUND

Policy makers struggle with unplanned readmissions as a quality indicator since integrating preventability in such indicators is difficult. Most studies on the preventability of readmissions questioned physicians whether they consider a given readmission to be preventable, from which conclusions on factors predicting preventable readmissions were derived. There is no literature on the interobserver agreement of physician judgement.

AIM

To assess the degree of agreement among physicians regarding predictability and preventability of medical readmissions.

DESIGN

An online survey based on eight real-life case scenarios was distributed to European physicians.

METHODS

Physicians were requested to rate from the first four (index admission) scenarios whether they expected these patients to be readmitted within 30 days (the predictability). The remaining four cases, describing a readmission, were used to assess the preventability. The main outcome was the degree of agreement among physicians determined using the intra class correlation coefficient (ICC).

RESULTS

526 European medical physicians completed the survey. Most physicians had internal medicine as primary specialism. The median years of clinical experience was 11. ICC for predictability of readmission was 0.67 (moderate to good) and ICC for preventability of readmission was 0.13 (poor).

CONCLUSION

There was moderate to good agreement among physicians on the predictability of readmissions while agreement on preventability was poor. This study indicates that assessing preventability of readmissions based solely on the judgement of physicians is far from perfect. Current literature on the preventability of readmissions and conclusions derived on the basis of physician opinion should be interpreted with caution.

Exploring the preventable causes of unplanned readmissions using root cause analysis: Coordination of care is the weakest link

IMPORTANCE

Unplanned readmissions within 30days are a common phenomenon in everyday practice and lead to increasing costs. Although many studies aiming to analyze the probable causes leading to unplanned readmissions have been performed, an in depth-study analyzing the human (healthcare worker)-, organizational-, technical-, disease- and patient-related causes leading to readmission is still missing.

OBJECTIVE

The primary objective of this study was to identify human-, organizational-, technical-, disease- and patient-related causes which contribute to acute readmission within 30days after discharge using a Root-Cause Analysis Tool called PRISMA-medical. The secondary objective was to evaluate how many of these readmissions were deemed potentially preventable, and to assess which factors contributed to these preventable readmissions in comparison to non-preventable readmissions.

DESIGN

Cross-sectional retrospective record study.

SETTING

An academic medical center in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

PARTICIPANTS

Fifty patients aged 18years and older discharged from an internal medicine department and acutely readmitted within 30days after discharge.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Root causes of preventable and unpreventable readmissions.

RESULTS

Most root causes for readmission were disease-related (46%), followed by human (healthcare worker)- (33%) and patient- (15%) related root causes. Half of the readmissions studied were considered to be potentially preventable. Preventable readmissions predominantly had human-related (coordination) failures.

CONCLUSION AND RELEVANCE

Our study suggests that improving human-related (coordinating) factors contributing to a readmission can potentially decrease the number of preventable readmissions.

Readmissions of medical patients: an external validation of two existing prediction scores

BACKGROUND

Hospital readmissions are increasingly used as a quality indicator with a belief that they are a marker of poor care and have led to financial penalties in UK and USA. Risk scoring systems, such as LACE and HOSPITAL, have been proposed as tools for identifying patients at high risk of readmission but have not been validated in international populations.

AIM

To perform an external independent validation of the HOSPITAL and LACE scores.

DESIGN

An unplanned secondary cohort study.

METHODS

Patients admitted to the medical admission unit at the Hospital of South West Jutland (10/2008-2/2009; 2/2010-5/2010) and the Odense University Hospital (6/2009-8/2011) were analysed. Validation of the scores using 30 day readmissions as the endpoint was performed.

RESULTS

A total of 19 277 patients fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Median age was 67 (range 18-107) years and 8977 (46.6%) were female. The LACE score had a discriminatory power of 0.648 with poor calibration and the HOSPITAL score had a discriminatory power of 0.661 with poor calibration. The HOSPITAL score was significantly better than the LACE score for identifying patients at risk of 30 day readmission (P < 0.001). The discriminatory power of both scores decreased with increasing age.

CONCLUSION

Readmissions are a complex phenomenon with not only medical conditions contributing but also system, cultural and environmental factors exerting a significant influence. It is possible that the heterogeneity of the population and health care systems may prohibit the creation of a simple prediction tool that can be used internationally.

A pragmatic triage system to reduce length of stay in medical emergency admission: feasibility study and health economic analysis

BACKGROUND

Departments of Internal Medicine tend to treat patients on a first come first served basis. The effects of using triage systems are not known.

METHODS

We studied a cohort in an Acute Medical Unit (AMU). A computer-assisted triage system using acute physiology, pre-existing illness and mobility identified five distinct risk categories. Management of the category of very low risk patients was streamlined by a dedicated Navigator. Main outcome parameters were length of hospital stay (LOS) and overall costs. Results were adjusted for the degree of frailty as measured by the Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS). A six month baseline phase and intervention phase were compared.

RESULTS

6764 patients were included: 3084 in the baseline and 3680 in the intervention phase. Patients with very low risk of death accounted for 40% of the cohort. The LOS of the 1489 patients with very low risk of death in the intervention group was reduced by a mean of 1.85days if compared with the 1276 patients with very low risk in the baseline cohort. This was true even after adjustment for frailty. Over the six month period the cost of care was reduced by £250,158 in very low patients with no increase in readmissions or 30day mortality.

CONCLUSIONS

Implementation of an advanced triage system had a measurable impact on cost of care for patients with very low risk of death. Patients were safely discharged earlier to their own home and the intervention was cost-effective.

Into the night: factors affecting response to abnormal Early Warning Scores out-of-hours and implications for service improvement

BACKGROUND

Early Warning Scores alert staff to preventable deterioration. Raised scores should lead to escalation of care.

AIMS

To establish response of staff to patients scoring National Early Warning Score (NEWS) of six or above and to identify patient and environmental factors affecting escalation by nursing staff.

METHODS

Service evaluation with prospective review of patient records of 118 beds on four medical wards during 20 night-shifts.

RESULTS

During 2360 observed bed days 109 patients triggered NEWS>=6 at least once during the observation period. Nursing staff escalated only 18 (17%) of these patients; nearly all of them had predefined chronic health conditions, the majority fulfilled criteria for frailty. Despite their higher 30-day mortality patients with COPD had lower escalation rates. Additionally wards that had more patients with a NEWS>=6 had lower escalation rates.

CONCLUSION

Alarm fatigue and clinical judgement of staff might result in deviation from escalation protocols.

"State of the Nation"--the Society for Acute Medicine's Benchmarking Audit 2013 (SAMBA '13)

BACKGROUND

Benchmarking is important to improve quality of care.

AIM

To audit the performance of Acute Medical Units (AMUs) against the clinical quality indicators published by the Society for Acute Medicine (SAM).

METHODS

24-hour data collection on the 20th of June 2013 with follow-up data at 72 hours.

RESULTS

43 units submitted data on 1425 patients. 76% of patients had early warning scores recorded within 30 minutes of admission, 95% of patients had been seen by a competent decision maker within four hours. 79% of patients were seen by a consultant physicians within the appropriate period of time.

CONCLUSION

The difference in compliance with quality standards between UK units opens opportunities for learning. The reasons why some units perform better than others require further investigation.

Where do AMU nurses perceive their educational needs? Results of the 20:10 project

Our aim was to identify the perceived educational needs of nurses working in acute medicine to enable development of a training curriculum specifically for this staff group.

METHODS

Post-graduate nurses from North Wales were invited to list 20 conditions and 10 skills for which they felt under prepared for their work in acute medicine. A workshop was then organized, attended by acute medicine nurses, medical colleagues and educationalists from two local universities to discuss initial data.

RESULTS

Nurses identified particular needs for education around presenting symptoms with perceived deficits in knowledge or training. We found a heavy emphasis on respiratory and cardiac conditions. There was considerable overlap with frequent diagnostic categories from non-surgical hospital discharges and with priorities for training of junior doctors. Skills were often those traditionally associated with medical staff or care of patients with critical illnesses.

CONCLUSION

The 20:10 project represents the first attempt to map educational needs of nursing staff on the Acute Medical Units of a large University Health Board using self-reported needs. The identified needs will support professional development, create incentives for recruitment and guide University postgraduate developments and commissioning.

Acute Medicine: triage, timing and teaching in the context of medical emergency admissions

Acute Medicine has been recognized as a sub-specialty of General Internal Medicine in the UK for 6 years. Acute Medicine aims to streamline diagnostic processes and treatment decisions for patients presenting with an acute illness in Internal Medicine in order to improve safety, patient experience and resource utilization. Acute Physicians are specialists in Acute Medicine. Co-location of patients in Acute Medical Units helps to rationalize logistical processes and supports training of junior doctors in supervised management of both life-threatening and complex medical emergencies. Research is needed to formally evaluate the impact of the format of service delivery on clinical outcomes and length of hospital stay for patients with comparable sickness profiles.

The simple clinical score: a tool for benchmarking of emergency admissions in acute internal medicine

Quality of care in intensive care and surgery has benefited from establishing comparative standards. At present there is no accepted tool to compare outcomes for emergency admissions in internal medicine. The Simple Clinical Score (SCS) was used in 1098 consecutive medical emergency admissions to adjust mortality for severity of illness. Hospital mortality adjusted for severity of illness and length of stay in the cohort was in keeping with mortality in the Irish derivation study with a trend towards lower mortality in the very high-risk group. Three parameters with poor reproducibility were identified. The SCS has several potential applications: identification of patients with low risk of death suitable for early hospital discharge; early identification of patients with a high risk of death, who will require care in critical care areas (or specialist palliative care); and benchmarking of acute medical departments internationally in a similar way to how APACHE II scoring has been used in critical care units worldwide.

Numbers needed to hospitalize-risks and benefits of admission in the new decade

While hospitals are central to western style health care systems it is unclear which patients benefit from hospitalization and who might be put at risk. The high cost means that reasons for hospitalization will need to be reviewed in the current economic climate. Accepted grounds for hospitalization include life threatening illness, diagnostic uncertainty with the threat of deteriorating health, the need for specialist expertise or experience or the need for nursing care, including the care of the dying. Some of the traditional surveillance functions of the hospital can now be taken over by technology or alternative settings. These changes will lead to a blurring of margins between Outpatient, Inpatient and Critical Care. Beyond the care of the critically ill patient it is unlikely that all patients currently admitted to hospital benefit from this process and would be admitted in future. A generally accepted system for risk assessment of medial inpatients is urgently needed to allow researchers to examine the effectiveness of health care systems involving hospitalization and the circumstances under which hospitalization is cost effective and improves mortality, morbidity and patient reported outcomes.

Collaborative Audit of Risk Evaluation in Medical Emergency Treatment (CARE-MET I) - an international pilot

BACKGROUND

The absence of an accepted model for risk-adjustment of acute medical admissions leads to suboptimal clinical triage and serves as a disincentive to compare outcomes in different hospitals. The Simple Clinical Score (SCS) is a model based on 16 clinical parameters affecting hospital mortality.

METHODS

We undertook a feasibility pilot in 21 hospitals in Europe and New Zealand each collecting data for 12 or more consecutive medical emergency admissions. Data from 281 patients was analysed.

RESULTS

Severity of illness as estimated by SCS was related to risk of admission to the Intensive Care Unit (p<0.001) but not to the Coronary Care Unit. Mortality increased from 0% in the Very Low Risk group to 22% in the Very High Risk Group (p<0.0001). Very low scores were associated with earlier discharge as opposed to very high scores (mean length of stay of 2.4 days vs 5.6 days, p<0.001). There were differences in the pattern of discharges in different hospitals with comparable SCS data. Clinicians reported no significant problems with the collection of data for the score in a number of different health care settings.

CONCLUSION

The SCS appears to be a feasible tool to assist clinical triage of medical emergency admissions. The ability to view the profile of the SCS for different clinical centres opens up the possibility of accurate comparison of outcomes across clinical centres without distortion by different regional standards of health care. This pilot study demonstrates that the adoption of the SCS is practical across an international range of hospitals.

Weaning units: lessons from North America?

In the United Kingdom over 5% of critical care beds are occupied by stable patients weaning from mechanical ventilation. In North America, diagnosis related groups (DRGs) were introduced over a decade ago. These provided an economic impetus to develop more cost effective regional weaning centres. The imminent introduction of Payment By Results may encourage similar developments in the UK. The evidence for weaning centres is reviewed and detailed organisational and outcome data from two North American centres presented. These units differ from UK critical care units in terms of nurse : patient ratios and types and numbers of ancillary staff. Limited data, mostly from North America, suggest that weaning centres may be better at improving outcome in ventilator-dependent patients compared with standard critical care. The existing evidence is not conclusive and highlights the need for UK-based studies on organisational approaches to the provision of weaning and longer term critical care.

Validation of physiological scoring systems in the accident and emergency department

BACKGROUND

Scoring systems that weigh the degree of abnormality of bedside observations might be able to identify patients at risk of catastrophic deterioration.

OBJECTIVES

To establish a frequency distribution for typical physiological scoring systems and to establish the potential benefit of adding these to an existing triage system in accident and emergency departments.

METHODS

Physiological data were collected from 53 unselected emergency department admissions, from 50 patients admitted from the emergency department to intensive care, and from 50 patients admitted from emergency department to general wards and then to intensive care. Three different physiological scores were calculated from the data. Identification of sick patients by the scores was compared with triage information from the Manchester Triage System (MTS).

RESULTS

Most patients admitted to the emergency department would not be identified as critically ill with the aid of physiological scoring systems. This was true even for patients who were admitted to intensive care. Only in 0-8% of unselected patients did the scores indicate increased risk. In 100 patients admitted to the intensive care, adding of medical emergency team call-out criteria, Modified Early Warning Score or Assessment Score for Sick patient Identification and Step-up in Treatment would identify none, seven or one patient in addition to those triaged as orange and red by the MTS.

CONCLUSIONS

Introduction of a physiological scoring system would have identified only a small number of additional patients as critically ill and added little to the triage system currently in use.

Does earlier detection of critically ill patients on surgical wards lead to better outcomes?

INTRODUCTION

Patients at risk of catastrophic deterioration are often identified too late. Delayed identification of sick patients and delayed referral to intensive care units might be associated with poor outcomes. The goal of the review is to assess the potential impact of systems that enable early detection of critically ill surgical patients.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A Medline search was performed in September 2004. Other articles were identified using the bibliographies of papers found through Medline. All interventional trials reviewing the effect of Critical Care Outreach and Medical Emergency Teams were reviewed.

RESULTS

There is evidence that simple algorithms based on bedside observations can identify a large proportion of sick patients on general wards. Non-randomised studies have shown mixed results on impact of these interventions on mortality, cardiopulmonary arrests and intensive care admissions. The majority of studies do not specifically address surgical patients. A ward-based randomised trial from the UK seems to suggest improved mortality following the introduction of a Critical Care Outreach service with an Early Warning Score.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The literature about Critical Care Outreach and Medical Emergency teams is characterised by methodological weaknesses. However there is a common suggestion that early detection might improve outcome of critically ill surgical patients.

Effect of introducing the Modified Early Warning score on clinical outcomes, cardio-pulmonary arrests and intensive care utilisation in acute medical admissions

The effects of introducing Modified Early Warning scores to identify medical patients at risk of catastrophic deterioration have not been examined. We prospectively studied 1695 acute medical admissions. All patients were scored in the admissions unit. Patients with a Modified Early Warning score > 4 were referred for urgent medical and critical care outreach team review. Data was compared with an observational study performed in the same unit during the proceeding year. There was no change in mortality of patients with low, intermediate or high Modified Early Warning scores. Rates of cardio-pulmonary arrest, intensive care unit or high dependency unit admission were similar. Data analysis confirmed respiratory rate as the best discriminator in identifying high-risk patient groups. The therapeutic interventions performed in response to abnormal scores were not assessed. We are convinced that the Modified Early Warning score is a suitable scoring tool to identify patients at risk. However, outcomes in medical emergency admissions are influenced by a multitude of factors and so it may be difficult to demonstrate the score's benefit without further standardizing the response to abnormal values.

Validation of a modified Early Warning Score in medical admissions

The Early Warning Score (EWS) is a simple physiological scoring system suitable for bedside application. The ability of a modified Early Warning Score (MEWS) to identify medical patients at risk of catastrophic deterioration in a busy clinical area was investigated. In a prospective cohort study, we applied MEWS to patients admitted to the 56-bed acute Medical Admissions Unit (MAU) of a District General Hospital (DGH). Data on 709 medical emergency admissions were collected during March 2000. Main outcome measures were death, intensive care unit (ICU) admission, high dependency unit (HDU) admission, cardiac arrest, survival and hospital discharge at 60 days. Scores of 5 or more were associated with increased risk of death (OR 5.4, 95%CI 2.8-10.7), ICU admission (OR 10.9, 95%CI 2.2-55.6) and HDU admission (OR 3.3, 95%CI 1.2-9.2). MEWS can be applied easily in a DGH medical admission unit, and identifies patients at risk of deterioration who require increased levels of care in the HDU or ICU. A clinical pathway could be created, using nurse practitioners and/or critical care physicians, to respond to high scores and intervene with appropriate changes in clinical management.