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BackgroundEmergency department (ED) triage is performed to prioritize care for patients with critical and time-sensitive illness. Triage errors create opportunity for increased morbidity and mortality. Here, we sought to measure the frequency of under- and over-triage of patients by nurses using the Emergency Severity Index (ESI) in Brazil and to identify factors independently associated with each.MethodsThis was a single-center retrospective cohort study. The accuracy of initial ESI score assignment was determined by comparison with a score entered at the close of each ED encounter by treating physicians with full knowledge of actual resource utilization, disposition, and acute outcomes. Chi-square analysis was used to validate this surrogate gold standard, via comparison of associations with disposition and clinical outcomes. Independent predictors of under- and over-triage were identified by multivariate logistic regression.ResultsInitial ESI-determined triage score was classified as inaccurate for 16,426 of 96,071 patient encounters. Under-triage was associated with a significantly higher rate of admission and critical outcome, while over-triage was associated with a lower rate of both. A number of factors identifiable at time of presentation including advanced age, bradycardia, tachycardia, hypoxia, hyperthermia, and several specific chief complaints (i.e., neurologic complaints, chest pain, shortness of breath) were identified as independent predictors of under-triage, while other chief complaints (i.e., hypertension and allergic complaints) were independent predictors of over-triage.ConclusionsDespite rigorous and ongoing training of ESI users, a large number of patients in this cohort were under- or over-triaged. Advanced age, vital sign derangements, and specific chief complaints—all subject to limited guidance by the ESI algorithm—were particularly under-appreciated.

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There is potential to use readily available health information to predict daily patient discharges with accuracies comparable to clinician predictions. This approach may be used to automate and support daily RTDC predictions aimed at improving patient flow.

IMPORTANCE Sepsis and septic shock are common and, at times, fatal in pediatrics. Blood cultures are often obtained when clinicians suspect sepsis, yet are low-yield with a false-positive rate up to 50%. OBJECTIVES To determine whether a novel, 2-part, clinical practice guideline could decrease the rates of total blood cultures and cultures collected from central venous catheters in critically ill children and to examine the effect of the guideline on patient outcomes. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS A retrospective cohort study was performed to determine the effect of a new clinical practice guideline on blood culture practices in a 36-bed, combined medical/surgical pediatric intensive care unit of an urban, academic, tertiary care center from April 1, 2013, to March 31, 2015. All patients admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit with length of stay of 4 hours or more were evaluated (4560 patient visits: 2204 preintervention, 2356 postintervention visits). INTERVENTIONS Two documents were developed: (1) fever/sepsis screening checklist and (2) blood culture decision algorithm. Clinicians consulted these documents when considering ordering blood cultures and for guidance about the culture source. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Primary outcome was the total number of blood cultures collected per 100 patient-days. RESULTS Of the 2204 children evaluated before the intervention, 1215 were male (55.1%); median (interquartile range) age was 5 (1-13) years. Postintervention analysis included 2356 children; 1262 were male (53.6%) and median (interquartile range) age was 6 (1-13) years. A total of 1807 blood cultures were drawn before the intervention during 11 196 patient-days; 984 cultures were drawn after the intervention during 11 204 patient-days (incidence rate, 16.1 vs 8.8 cultures per 100 patient-days). There was a 46.0% reduction after the intervention in the blood culture collection rate (incidence rate ratio, 0.54; 95% CI, 0.50-0.59). After the intervention, there was an immediate 25.0% reduction in the rate of cultures per 100 patient-days (95% CI, 4.2%-39.7%; P = .02) and a sustained 6.6% (95% CI, 4.7%-8.4%; P < .001) monthly decrease in the rate of cultures per 100 patient-days. Significantly fewer cultures were collected from central venous catheters after vs before the intervention (389 [39.5%] vs 1321 [73.1%]; P < .001). Rates of episodes defined as suspected infection and suspected septic shock decreased significantly after the intervention, but patients meeting these criteria underwent cultures at unchanged frequencies before vs after the intervention (52.1% vs 47.0%, P = .09, compared with 56.7% vs 55.0%, P = .75). In-hospital mortality (45 [2.0] vs 37 [1.6]; P = .23) and hospital readmissions (107 [4.9] vs 103 [4.4]; P = .42) were unchanged after the intervention. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE A systematic approach to blood cultures decreased the total number of cultures and central venous catheter cultures, without an increase in rates of mortality, readmission, or episodes of suspected infection and ...

Background:Targeted screening for carbapenem-resistant organisms (CROs), including carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) and carbapenemase-producing organisms (CPOs), remains limited; recent data suggest that existing policies miss many carriers.Objective:Our objective was to measure the prevalence of CRO and CPO perirectal colonization at hospital unit admission and to use machine learning methods to predict probability of CRO and/or CPO carriage.Methods:We performed an observational cohort study of all patients admitted to the medical intensive care unit (MICU) or solid organ transplant (SOT) unit at The Johns Hopkins Hospital between July 1, 2016 and July 1, 2017. Admission perirectal swabs were screened for CROs and CPOs. More than 125 variables capturing preadmission clinical and demographic characteristics were collected from the electronic medical record (EMR) system. We developed models to predict colonization probabilities using decision tree learning.Results:Evaluating 2,878 admission swabs from 2,165 patients, we found that 7.5% and 1.3% of swabs were CRO and CPO positive, respectively. Organism and carbapenemase diversity among CPO isolates was high. Despite including many characteristics commonly associated with CRO/CPO carriage or infection, overall, decision tree models poorly predicted CRO and CPO colonization (C statistics, 0.57 and 0.58, respectively). In subgroup analyses, however, models did accurately identify patients with recent CRO-positive cultures who use proton-pump inhibitors as having a high likelihood of CRO colonization.Conclusions:In this inpatient population, CRO carriage was infrequent but was higher than previously published estimates. Despite including many variables associated with CRO/CPO carriage, models poorly predicted colonization status, likely due to significant host and organism heterogeneity.

There was a substantial increase in patients covered by Medicaid in the post-ACA period, but this did not significantly affect total ED volume. Returning patients newly enrolled in Medicaid visited the ED more than their uninsured counterparts; however, this cohort accounted for only a small percentage of total ED visits in Maryland.