Quality of physician care coordination during inter-facility transfer for cardiac arrest patients

Abstract

Aim-We sought to evaluate whether the quality of coordination between physicians transferring comatose cardiac arrest survivors to a high-volume cardiac arrest center for targeted temperature management (TTM) was associated with timeliness of care.Methods-We conducted a retrospective analysis of inter-facility transfers to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for TTM between October 2016 and October 2018. We examined the relationship between Relational Coordination (RC) -a measure of communication and relationship quality -during phone conversations between transferring physicians and time-toacceptance.Results-We identified 18 patients meeting criteria. TTM was initiated or continued in 72%, and in-hospital mortality was 75%. Median time-to-acceptance was 2.77 (interquartile range [IQR] 2.0, 4.1) minutes, and duration of calls was 3.95 (IQR 2.7, 5.2) minutes. Interrater reliability for *