First name
Luis
Middle name
M
Last name
Ahumada

Title

Safety Huddle Intervention for Reducing Physiologic Monitor Alarms: A Hybrid Effectiveness-Implementation Cluster Randomized Trial.

Year of Publication

2018

Date Published

2018 Feb 27

ISSN Number

1553-5606

Abstract

<p><strong>BACKGROUND: </strong>Monitor alarms occur frequently but rarely warrant intervention.</p>

<p><strong>OBJECTIVE: </strong>This study aimed to determine if a safety huddle-based intervention reduces unit-level alarm rates or alarm rates of individual patients whose alarms are discussed, as well as evaluate implementation outcomes.</p>

<p><strong>DESIGN: </strong>Unit-level, cluster randomized, hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial with a secondary patient-level analysis.</p>

<p><strong>SETTING: </strong>Children's hospital.</p>

<p><strong>PATIENTS: </strong>Unit-level: all patients hospitalized on 4 control (n = 4177) and 4 intervention (n = 7131) units between June 15, 2015 and May 8, 2016. Patient-level: 425 patients on randomly selected dates postimplementation.</p>

<p><strong>INTERVENTION: </strong>Structured safety huddle review of alarm data from the patients on each unit with the most alarms, with a discussion of ways to reduce alarms.</p>

<p><strong>MEASUREMENTS: </strong>Unit-level: change in unit-level alarm rates between baseline and postimplementation periods in intervention versus control units. Patient-level: change in individual patients' alarm rates between the 24 hours leading up to huddles and the 24 hours after huddles in patients who were discussed versus not discussed in huddles.</p>

<p><strong>RESULTS: </strong>Alarm data informed 580 huddle discussions. In unit-level analysis, intervention units had 2 fewer alarms/patient-day (95% CI: 7 fewer to 6 more, P = .50) compared with control units. In patient-level analysis, patients discussed in huddles had 97 fewer alarms/patientday (95% CI: 52-138 fewer, P &lt; .001) in the posthuddle period compared with patients not discussed in huddles. Implementation outcome analysis revealed a low intervention dose of 0.85 patients/unit/day.</p>

<p><strong>CONCLUSIONS: </strong>Safety huddle-based alarm discussions did not influence unit-level alarm rates due to low intervention dose but were effective in reducing alarms for individual children.</p>

DOI

10.12788/jhm.2956

Alternate Title

J Hosp Med

PMID

29489921

Title

Design and Implementation of a Visual Analytics Electronic Antibiogram within an Electronic Health Record System at a Tertiary Pediatric Hospital.

Year of Publication

2018

Number of Pages

37-45

Date Published

2018 Jan

ISSN Number

1869-0327

Abstract

<p><strong>BACKGROUND: </strong> Hospitals use antibiograms to guide optimal empiric antibiotic therapy, reduce inappropriate antibiotic usage, and identify areas requiring intervention by antimicrobial stewardship programs. Creating a hospital antibiogram is a time-consuming manual process that is typically performed annually.</p>

<p><strong>OBJECTIVE: </strong> We aimed to apply visual analytics software to electronic health record (EHR) data to build an automated, electronic antibiogram ("e-antibiogram") that adheres to national guidelines and contains filters for patient characteristics, thereby providing access to detailed, clinically relevant, and up-to-date antibiotic susceptibility data.</p>

<p><strong>METHODS: </strong> We used visual analytics software to develop a secure, EHR-linked, condition- and patient-specific e-antibiogram that supplies susceptibility maps for organisms and antibiotics in a comprehensive report that is updated on a monthly basis. Antimicrobial susceptibility data were grouped into nine clinical scenarios according to the specimen source, hospital unit, and infection type. We implemented the e-antibiogram within the EHR system at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, a tertiary pediatric hospital and analyzed e-antibiogram access sessions from March 2016 to March 2017.</p>

<p><strong>RESULTS: </strong> The e-antibiogram was implemented in the EHR with over 6,000 inpatient, 4,500 outpatient, and 3,900 emergency department isolates. The e-antibiogram provides access to rolling 12-month pathogen and susceptibility data that is updated on a monthly basis. E-antibiogram access sessions increased from an average of 261 sessions per month during the first 3 months of the study to 345 sessions per month during the final 3 months.</p>

<p><strong>CONCLUSION: </strong> An e-antibiogram that was built and is updated using EHR data and adheres to national guidelines is a feasible replacement for an annual, static, manually compiled antibiogram. Future research will examine the impact of the e-antibiogram on antibiotic prescribing patterns.</p>

DOI

10.1055/s-0037-1615787

Alternate Title

Appl Clin Inform

PMID

29342478

Title

The timing and prevalence of intraoperative hypotension in infants undergoing laparoscopic pyloromyotomy at a tertiary pediatric hospital.

Year of Publication

2016

Date Published

2016 Nov 29

ISSN Number

1460-9592

Abstract

<p><strong>BACKGROUND: </strong>Intraoperative hypotension may be associated with adverse outcomes in children undergoing surgery. Infants and neonates under 6 months of age have less autoregulatory cerebral reserve than older infants, yet little information exists regarding when and how often intraoperative hypotension occurs in infants.</p>

<p><strong>AIMS: </strong>To better understand the epidemiology of intraoperative hypotension in infants, we aimed to determine the prevalence of intraoperative hypotension in a generally uniform population of infants undergoing laparoscopic pyloromyotomy.</p>

<p><strong>METHODS: </strong>Vital sign data from electronic records of infants who underwent laparoscopic pyloromyotomy with general anesthesia at a children's hospital between January 1, 1998 and October 4, 2013 were analyzed. Baseline blood pressure (BP) values and intraoperative BPs were identified during eight perioperative stages based on anesthesia event timestamps. We determined the occurrence of relative (systolic BP &lt;20% below baseline) and absolute (mean arterial BP &lt;35 mmHg) intraoperative hypotension within each stage.</p>

<p><strong>RESULTS: </strong>A total of 735 full-term infants and 82 preterm infants met the study criteria. Relative intraoperative hypotension occurred in 77%, 72%, and 58% of infants in the 1-30, 31-60, and 61-90 days age groups, respectively. Absolute intraoperative hypotension was seen in 21%, 12%, and 4% of infants in the 1-30, 31-60, and 61-90 days age groups, respectively. Intraoperative hypotension occurred primarily during surgical prep and throughout the surgical procedure. Preterm infants had higher rates of absolute intraoperative hypotension than full-term infants.</p>

<p><strong>CONCLUSIONS: </strong>Relative intraoperative hypotension was routine and absolute intraoperative hypotension was common in neonates and infants under 91 days of age. Preterm infants and infants under 61 days of age experienced the highest rates of absolute and relative intraoperative hypotension, particularly during surgical prep and throughout surgery.</p>

DOI

10.1111/pan.13036

Alternate Title

Paediatr Anaesth

PMID

27896911

Title

Visual analytical tool for evaluation of 10-year perioperative transfusion practice at a children's hospital.

Year of Publication

2014

Number of Pages

529-34

Date Published

2014 May-Jun

ISSN Number

1527-974X

Abstract

<p>Children are a vulnerable population in the operating room, and are particularly at risk of complications from unanticipated hemorrhage. The decision to prepare blood products prior to surgery varies depending on the personal experience of the clinician caring for the patient. We present the first application of a data visualization technique to study large datasets in the context of blood product transfusions at a tertiary pediatric hospital. The visual analytical interface allows real-time interaction with datasets from 230 000 procedure records. Clinicians can use the visual analytical interface to analyze blood product usage based on procedure- and patient-specific factors, and then use that information to guide policies for ordering blood products.</p>

DOI

10.1136/amiajnl-2013-002241

Alternate Title

J Am Med Inform Assoc

PMID

24363319

Title

Optimization of drug-drug interaction alert rules in a pediatric hospital's electronic health record system using a visual analytics dashboard.

Year of Publication

2015

Number of Pages

361-9

Date Published

03/2015

ISSN Number

1527-974X

Abstract

<p><strong>OBJECTIVE: </strong>To develop and evaluate an electronic dashboard of hospital-wide electronic health record medication alerts for an alert fatigue reduction quality improvement project.</p>

<p><strong>METHODS: </strong>We used visual analytics software to develop the dashboard. We collaborated with the hospital-wide Clinical Decision Support committee to perform three interventions successively deactivating clinically irrelevant drug-drug interaction (DDI) alert rules. We analyzed the impact of the interventions on care providers' and pharmacists' alert and override rates using an interrupted time series framework with piecewise regression.</p>

<p><strong>RESULTS: </strong>We evaluated 2 391 880 medication alerts between January 31, 2011 and January 26, 2014. For pharmacists, the median alert rate prior to the first DDI deactivation was 58.74 alerts/100 orders (IQR 54.98-60.48) and 25.11 alerts/100 orders (IQR 23.45-26.57) following the three interventions (p&lt;0.001). For providers, baseline median alert rate prior to the first round of DDI deactivation was 19.73 alerts/100 orders (IQR 18.66-20.24) and 15.11 alerts/100 orders (IQR 14.44-15.49) following the three interventions (p&lt;0.001). In a subgroup analysis, we observed a decrease in pharmacists' override rates for DDI alerts that were not modified in the system from a median of 93.06 overrides/100 alerts (IQR 91.96-94.33) to 85.68 overrides/100 alerts (IQR 84.29-87.15, p&lt;0.001). The medication serious safety event rate decreased during the study period, and there were no serious safety events reported in association with the deactivated alert rules.</p>

<p><strong>CONCLUSIONS: </strong>An alert dashboard facilitated safe rapid-cycle reductions in alert burden that were temporally associated with lower pharmacist override rates in a subgroup of DDIs not directly affected by the interventions; meanwhile, the pharmacists' frequency of selecting the 'cancel' option increased. We hypothesize that reducing the alert burden enabled pharmacists to devote more attention to clinically relevant alerts.</p>

DOI

10.1136/amiajnl-2013-002538

Alternate Title

J Am Med Inform Assoc

PMID

25318641

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