Kathleen Kerr

It has been nearly 18 months since SHM launched the VTE Prevention Collaborative, which offers individualized assistance to hospitalists wishing to take the lead on reducing the incidence of preventable, hospital-acquired VTE at their sites.

The collaborative features two technical assistance options: a full year of distance mentoring or a one-day evaluation and consultation visit to the enrollee’s hospital. The project is led by Gregory Maynard, MD, and Jason Stein, MD. Both are stellar clinicians with quality improvement (QI) expertise and experience leading VTE prevention efforts. Dr. Maynard is head of the Division of Hospital Medicine and associate clinical professor of medicine at the University of California-San Diego. Dr. Stein is a hospitalist at Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital, assistant professor of Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine, and director of Quality Improvement for the Emory Hospital Medicine Unit.

Though we expect to continue working with sites enrolled in the mentoring program for many more months, the collaborative has been in place long enough that we can start evaluating outcomes and thinking about what we’ve learned.

In all, 35 hospitals so far have enrolled in the collaborative: three in the consultation program and 32 in the mentoring program. Because the participants enrolled in the mentoring program generally were starting from an earlier point in the QI process (i.e., thinking about starting a project vs. trying to improve an existing effort), we’ve focused our evaluation attention on them.

At the time of enrollment, 33% of these sites were thinking of starting a VTE-prevention project, 42% had an active QI project but had not yet implemented any interventions, and 25% had an active QI project and had implemented an intervention (i.e., a new order set or risk-assessment protocol).

We surveyed the 21 sites that have been involved in the mentoring program for at least six months, asking about the status of their VTE-prevention project and their experiences working with SHM mentors. So far, 15 have responded to the survey, and the results are quite interesting.

Since becoming involved with the collaborative, nearly every participant had made significant progress with their project:

• 94% had redesigned the processes for assessing VTE risk and bleeding risk and providing appropriate prophylaxis;
• 100% had selected a VTE risk assessment model, and 88% had developed prophylaxis recommendations for each level of risk;
• 100% had defined absolute and relative contraindications to pharmacologic prophylaxis and recommendations for what to do if they exist;
• 100% had developed order sets or protocols that encourage initial assessment of VTE risk and provision of appropriate prophylaxis; and
• 75% had developed order sets or protocols in use at their hospitals.

All seven sites that had a baseline figure that could be used for comparison reported their current rate of appropriate VTE prophylaxis is higher than it was before they became involved in the collaborative.

We asked participants to identify the topics with which they were helped by their mentors. The responses showed the breadth of issues that need attention to create a successful QI project. The topics covered and percentage of enrollees who sought help with them include:

• Defining the goals, aims and scope of your project, 93%;
• Redesigning your VTE prevention process, 87%;
• Developing risk assessment and prophylaxis recommendations, 87%;
• Developing order sets and protocols, 87%;
• Data collection and measurement, 87%;
• Piloting and revising risk assessment tools, order sets and protocols, 60%;
• Securing institutional support for your project, 47%;
• Assembling your project team, 47%;
• Mapping the original (pre-collaborative involvement) VTE prevention process at your site, 40%;
• Identifying and securing support from key stakeholders, 33%; and
• Developing educational/outreach strategies or materials, 27%.

Data collection and measurement remain a central issue for most participants. Nearly every mentoring call (mentors and participants speak once a month for the first six months of enrollment and every three months thereafter) focused at least in part on figuring out how to develop baseline data, monitor adherence to a new protocol, and determine if clinical outcomes were improving.

Of note, 100% of respondents said they would recommend the collaborative to others.

Hospitalists and QI

An impressive 67% of respondents indicated their work on the VTE project has helped identify them as a QI leader in their hospital or within their hospital medicine group. More impressively, 93% are working on or have signed up to work on other QI efforts.

The range of topics participants are turning their attention to are amazingly varied: acute coronary syndromes, heart failure, sepsis, glycemic control, pneumonia, delirium prevention, therapeutic hypothermia, hand washing, core measures, Joint Commission certification for a number of diagnoses/processes, do-not-resuscitate documentation/ordering, medication reconciliation, SCIP, hand-off communications, and computerized physician order entry. Or, as one respondent put it, “too many projects to name.”

While it is heartening that success in one area is being leveraged in other areas, a sobering reality is that only 7% of these folks have allotted time to pursue QI projects – all others do QI work on a volunteer basis, in addition to existing clinical and administrative responsibilities.

QI work is fun and rewarding but also time-consuming and at times, difficult and lonely. Heroic volunteerism is not necessarily a bad thing—many hospitalists are passionate about improving care and contributing to the hospitals where they work. Too much volunteerism leads to burnout and ultimately is not sustainable. Perhaps a mentoring emphasis should be helping people recognize and quantify the value of their efforts, and developing the negotiation skills that would help secure funding for their work.

What’s Next?

Drs. Maynard and Stein are among the SHM members with an interest in VTE who have convened the VTE Advisory Board. Under the leadership of Sylvia McKean, MD, the advisory board is exploring ways SHM can continue its work to promote the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of VTE.

Areas of interest include working with health systems, as opposed to individual hospitals, as a means of rapidly spreading tools and processes that promote assessment of VTE risk and administration of appropriate prophylaxis. The VTE collaborative team was thrilled to welcome five Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals into the collaborative. It is hoped this group will succeed not only in developing successful local VTE prevention efforts, but also will develop a framework and set of tools that can be exported to all VA sites. Leveraging commonly used health IT systems is another exciting option for rapidly disseminating the tools and materials the collaborative’s members have developed.

It has been nearly 18 months since SHM launched the VTE Prevention Collaborative, which offers individualized assistance to hospitalists wishing to take the lead on reducing the incidence of preventable, hospital-acquired VTE at their sites.

The collaborative features two technical assistance options: a full year of distance mentoring or a one-day evaluation and consultation visit to the enrollee’s hospital. The project is led by Gregory Maynard, MD, and Jason Stein, MD. Both are stellar clinicians with quality improvement (QI) expertise and experience leading VTE prevention efforts. Dr. Maynard is head of the Division of Hospital Medicine and associate clinical professor of medicine at the University of California-San Diego. Dr. Stein is a hospitalist at Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital, assistant professor of Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine, and director of Quality Improvement for the Emory Hospital Medicine Unit.

Though we expect to continue working with sites enrolled in the mentoring program for many more months, the collaborative has been in place long enough that we can start evaluating outcomes and thinking about what we’ve learned.

In all, 35 hospitals so far have enrolled in the collaborative: three in the consultation program and 32 in the mentoring program. Because the participants enrolled in the mentoring program generally were starting from an earlier point in the QI process (i.e., thinking about starting a project vs. trying to improve an existing effort), we’ve focused our evaluation attention on them.

At the time of enrollment, 33% of these sites were thinking of starting a VTE-prevention project, 42% had an active QI project but had not yet implemented any interventions, and 25% had an active QI project and had implemented an intervention (i.e., a new order set or risk-assessment protocol).

We surveyed the 21 sites that have been involved in the mentoring program for at least six months, asking about the status of their VTE-prevention project and their experiences working with SHM mentors. So far, 15 have responded to the survey, and the results are quite interesting.

Since becoming involved with the collaborative, nearly every participant had made significant progress with their project:

• 94% had redesigned the processes for assessing VTE risk and bleeding risk and providing appropriate prophylaxis;
• 100% had selected a VTE risk assessment model, and 88% had developed prophylaxis recommendations for each level of risk;
• 100% had defined absolute and relative contraindications to pharmacologic prophylaxis and recommendations for what to do if they exist;
• 100% had developed order sets or protocols that encourage initial assessment of VTE risk and provision of appropriate prophylaxis; and
• 75% had developed order sets or protocols in use at their hospitals.

All seven sites that had a baseline figure that could be used for comparison reported their current rate of appropriate VTE prophylaxis is higher than it was before they became involved in the collaborative.

We asked participants to identify the topics with which they were helped by their mentors. The responses showed the breadth of issues that need attention to create a successful QI project. The topics covered and percentage of enrollees who sought help with them include:

• Defining the goals, aims and scope of your project, 93%;
• Redesigning your VTE prevention process, 87%;
• Developing risk assessment and prophylaxis recommendations, 87%;
• Developing order sets and protocols, 87%;
• Data collection and measurement, 87%;
• Piloting and revising risk assessment tools, order sets and protocols, 60%;
• Securing institutional support for your project, 47%;
• Assembling your project team, 47%;
• Mapping the original (pre-collaborative involvement) VTE prevention process at your site, 40%;
• Identifying and securing support from key stakeholders, 33%; and
• Developing educational/outreach strategies or materials, 27%.

Data collection and measurement remain a central issue for most participants. Nearly every mentoring call (mentors and participants speak once a month for the first six months of enrollment and every three months thereafter) focused at least in part on figuring out how to develop baseline data, monitor adherence to a new protocol, and determine if clinical outcomes were improving.

Of note, 100% of respondents said they would recommend the collaborative to others.

Hospitalists and QI

An impressive 67% of respondents indicated their work on the VTE project has helped identify them as a QI leader in their hospital or within their hospital medicine group. More impressively, 93% are working on or have signed up to work on other QI efforts.

The range of topics participants are turning their attention to are amazingly varied: acute coronary syndromes, heart failure, sepsis, glycemic control, pneumonia, delirium prevention, therapeutic hypothermia, hand washing, core measures, Joint Commission certification for a number of diagnoses/processes, do-not-resuscitate documentation/ordering, medication reconciliation, SCIP, hand-off communications, and computerized physician order entry. Or, as one respondent put it, “too many projects to name.”

While it is heartening that success in one area is being leveraged in other areas, a sobering reality is that only 7% of these folks have allotted time to pursue QI projects – all others do QI work on a volunteer basis, in addition to existing clinical and administrative responsibilities.

QI work is fun and rewarding but also time-consuming and at times, difficult and lonely. Heroic volunteerism is not necessarily a bad thing—many hospitalists are passionate about improving care and contributing to the hospitals where they work. Too much volunteerism leads to burnout and ultimately is not sustainable. Perhaps a mentoring emphasis should be helping people recognize and quantify the value of their efforts, and developing the negotiation skills that would help secure funding for their work.

What’s Next?

Drs. Maynard and Stein are among the SHM members with an interest in VTE who have convened the VTE Advisory Board. Under the leadership of Sylvia McKean, MD, the advisory board is exploring ways SHM can continue its work to promote the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of VTE.

Areas of interest include working with health systems, as opposed to individual hospitals, as a means of rapidly spreading tools and processes that promote assessment of VTE risk and administration of appropriate prophylaxis. The VTE collaborative team was thrilled to welcome five Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals into the collaborative. It is hoped this group will succeed not only in developing successful local VTE prevention efforts, but also will develop a framework and set of tools that can be exported to all VA sites. Leveraging commonly used health IT systems is another exciting option for rapidly disseminating the tools and materials the collaborative’s members have developed.

It has been nearly 18 months since SHM launched the VTE Prevention Collaborative, which offers individualized assistance to hospitalists wishing to take the lead on reducing the incidence of preventable, hospital-acquired VTE at their sites.

The collaborative features two technical assistance options: a full year of distance mentoring or a one-day evaluation and consultation visit to the enrollee’s hospital. The project is led by Gregory Maynard, MD, and Jason Stein, MD. Both are stellar clinicians with quality improvement (QI) expertise and experience leading VTE prevention efforts. Dr. Maynard is head of the Division of Hospital Medicine and associate clinical professor of medicine at the University of California-San Diego. Dr. Stein is a hospitalist at Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital, assistant professor of Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine, and director of Quality Improvement for the Emory Hospital Medicine Unit.

Though we expect to continue working with sites enrolled in the mentoring program for many more months, the collaborative has been in place long enough that we can start evaluating outcomes and thinking about what we’ve learned.

In all, 35 hospitals so far have enrolled in the collaborative: three in the consultation program and 32 in the mentoring program. Because the participants enrolled in the mentoring program generally were starting from an earlier point in the QI process (i.e., thinking about starting a project vs. trying to improve an existing effort), we’ve focused our evaluation attention on them.

At the time of enrollment, 33% of these sites were thinking of starting a VTE-prevention project, 42% had an active QI project but had not yet implemented any interventions, and 25% had an active QI project and had implemented an intervention (i.e., a new order set or risk-assessment protocol).

We surveyed the 21 sites that have been involved in the mentoring program for at least six months, asking about the status of their VTE-prevention project and their experiences working with SHM mentors. So far, 15 have responded to the survey, and the results are quite interesting.

Since becoming involved with the collaborative, nearly every participant had made significant progress with their project:

• 94% had redesigned the processes for assessing VTE risk and bleeding risk and providing appropriate prophylaxis;
• 100% had selected a VTE risk assessment model, and 88% had developed prophylaxis recommendations for each level of risk;
• 100% had defined absolute and relative contraindications to pharmacologic prophylaxis and recommendations for what to do if they exist;
• 100% had developed order sets or protocols that encourage initial assessment of VTE risk and provision of appropriate prophylaxis; and
• 75% had developed order sets or protocols in use at their hospitals.

All seven sites that had a baseline figure that could be used for comparison reported their current rate of appropriate VTE prophylaxis is higher than it was before they became involved in the collaborative.

We asked participants to identify the topics with which they were helped by their mentors. The responses showed the breadth of issues that need attention to create a successful QI project. The topics covered and percentage of enrollees who sought help with them include:

• Defining the goals, aims and scope of your project, 93%;
• Redesigning your VTE prevention process, 87%;
• Developing risk assessment and prophylaxis recommendations, 87%;
• Developing order sets and protocols, 87%;
• Data collection and measurement, 87%;
• Piloting and revising risk assessment tools, order sets and protocols, 60%;
• Securing institutional support for your project, 47%;
• Assembling your project team, 47%;
• Mapping the original (pre-collaborative involvement) VTE prevention process at your site, 40%;
• Identifying and securing support from key stakeholders, 33%; and
• Developing educational/outreach strategies or materials, 27%.

Data collection and measurement remain a central issue for most participants. Nearly every mentoring call (mentors and participants speak once a month for the first six months of enrollment and every three months thereafter) focused at least in part on figuring out how to develop baseline data, monitor adherence to a new protocol, and determine if clinical outcomes were improving.

Of note, 100% of respondents said they would recommend the collaborative to others.

Hospitalists and QI

An impressive 67% of respondents indicated their work on the VTE project has helped identify them as a QI leader in their hospital or within their hospital medicine group. More impressively, 93% are working on or have signed up to work on other QI efforts.

The range of topics participants are turning their attention to are amazingly varied: acute coronary syndromes, heart failure, sepsis, glycemic control, pneumonia, delirium prevention, therapeutic hypothermia, hand washing, core measures, Joint Commission certification for a number of diagnoses/processes, do-not-resuscitate documentation/ordering, medication reconciliation, SCIP, hand-off communications, and computerized physician order entry. Or, as one respondent put it, “too many projects to name.”

While it is heartening that success in one area is being leveraged in other areas, a sobering reality is that only 7% of these folks have allotted time to pursue QI projects – all others do QI work on a volunteer basis, in addition to existing clinical and administrative responsibilities.

QI work is fun and rewarding but also time-consuming and at times, difficult and lonely. Heroic volunteerism is not necessarily a bad thing—many hospitalists are passionate about improving care and contributing to the hospitals where they work. Too much volunteerism leads to burnout and ultimately is not sustainable. Perhaps a mentoring emphasis should be helping people recognize and quantify the value of their efforts, and developing the negotiation skills that would help secure funding for their work.

What’s Next?

Drs. Maynard and Stein are among the SHM members with an interest in VTE who have convened the VTE Advisory Board. Under the leadership of Sylvia McKean, MD, the advisory board is exploring ways SHM can continue its work to promote the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of VTE.

Areas of interest include working with health systems, as opposed to individual hospitals, as a means of rapidly spreading tools and processes that promote assessment of VTE risk and administration of appropriate prophylaxis. The VTE collaborative team was thrilled to welcome five Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals into the collaborative. It is hoped this group will succeed not only in developing successful local VTE prevention efforts, but also will develop a framework and set of tools that can be exported to all VA sites. Leveraging commonly used health IT systems is another exciting option for rapidly disseminating the tools and materials the collaborative’s members have developed.

Venous thromboembolic (VTE) disease, ranging from asymptomatic deep-vein thrombosis (DVT) to massive pulmonary embolism (PE), is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in hospitalized patients. Almost all hospitalized patients are at risk for VTE, and the literature suggests approximately half of all VTEs are hospital-acquired.

Hospitalists are ideally positioned to reduce the incidence of preventable VTEs, both by using known best practices to improve care delivered to their own patients, and, more importantly, by leading hospitalwide efforts that improve care for all patients at their home institutions.

In recognition of this important clinical issue and the role hospitalists can play in addressing it, SHM launched the VTE Prevention Collaborative (VTEPC) in January 2007. The program offers individualized assistance to hospitalists wishing to take the lead in this area.

The VTEPC offers two technical assistance options. Individuals interested in securing ongoing support for their planned or active VTE prevention projects can enroll in the mentoring program. This allows a full year of access to and support from SHM mentors with VTE and quality-improvement (QI) expertise. Mentoring occurs in eight telephone calls, during which mentors offer individualized assistance on any topics, tasks, or barriers commonly encountered in designing, implementing, and evaluating a VTE prevention project.

An on-site consultation program is designed for individuals interested in securing expert evaluation and input on a VTE prevention program but who don’t feel they need ongoing, longitudinal support. In this program, SHM consultants with VTE and QI expertise visit applicants’ hospitals to evaluate active or planned VTE prevention programs. The consultation visits feature a structured evaluation of the site’s strengths and resources, barriers to improvement, and the design and function of active or proposed VTE prevention interventions.

For both programs, support and instruction are organized around the VTE QI workbook, “Preventing Hospital-Acquired Venous Thromboembolism: A Guide for Effective Quality Improvement,” SHM’s step-by-step guide for developing a VTE prevention program. SHM secured the services of Greg Maynard, MD, and Jason Stein, MD, to provide mentoring and conduct consultation visits. Drs. Maynard and Stein have led successful local VTE prevention QI projects, hold QI leadership positions, and have taught QI and VTE prevention principals to local and national audiences. Dr. Maynard is head of the Division of Hospital Medicine and associate clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Stein is a hospitalist at Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital, assistant professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine, and director of quality improvement for the Emory Hospital Medicine Unit.

Both were also instrumental in developing SHM’s online VTE Resource Room and the VTE QI workbook.

Strong Responses

Twenty-seven hospitalists enrolled in the VTEPC in its first year of operation, 24 in the mentoring program and three in the consultation program.

Enrollees have broad experience in VTE prevention and QI. Some enrollees have been in practice for two years, others more than 25 years. Some fill QI leadership roles in their hospitals or hospital medicine groups. For others the VTE prevention project is their first experience leading a QI effort. Regional representation (19 states), hospital system representation (18 systems), hospital size (135 to 700 staffed beds), and hospital type (academic centers, community teaching hospitals, and community hospitals) are also broad. One enrollee works at a long-term acute care hospital, all others work at acute-care hospitals.

What They Said

Participants in the mentoring and consultation programs have reported that the support they’ve received has been enormously helpful.

According to feedback from one participant, support from the mentoring program made the potentially overwhelming prospect of launching a hospitalwide improvement effort much more manageable: “The prospect of launching a multihospital VTE Prevention Protocol was extremely daunting; however, with the help of my SHM mentor, we stand ready to pilot the program within the week. Our mentor carefully constructed a step-by-step process that allowed me to investigate the scope of the problem at the local level and develop a protocol that was embraced by our administration and physicians. He supplied me with resources and knowledge that allowed me to successfully handle multiple obstacles that arose along the way. What we have accomplished will have an enormous impact on the quality of care that we provide for our patients.”

Other participants have reported that having access to objective input from an external expert can help transform a slow-developing or ineffective prevention program. As one participant put it: “Mentoring through SHM’s VTE Prevention Collaborative has been an invaluable experience. Through monthly phone calls and frequent e-mails, our mentor focused our previously ineffective efforts and guided us to develop a streamlined tool that was custom-fit to the workflow at our hospital. He has saved us tremendous frustrations by directing us to the appropriate resources in our institution to accomplish tasks we would have attempted ourselves. Since our first phone call, he has been both our coach and cheerleader. The processes and techniques that he has taught us are applicable to every quality endeavor we engage in.”

What Impressed Experts

Drs. Maynard and Stein have been enormously impressed by what VTEPC members have achieved. “What is most impressive to me is how all these hospitalist project leaders in different settings are overcoming a wide variety of intuitional barriers, medical staff barriers, infrastructure barriers—all the obstacles that can challenge the typical big QI project,” says Dr. Maynard. He notes that not only are participants utilizing all the basic QI principles in all the ways that were outlined in the QI workbook, but they also are coming up with innovations and approaches beyond what the workbook authors envisioned.

“We learn from them as they come up with innovations to meet their own challenges,” Dr. Stein says. “It shows the resilience and flexibility of the QI framework. If you really work in your local setting on these things with the improvement framework in mind you can get by almost any barrier.” Drs. Maynard and Stein have noted that participants have been able to design and implement VTE prevention programs at a pace that far outstrips what the two mentors achieved at their home institutions.

Many participants have found real-time ways to identify patients who are not on prophylaxis but should be. At many sites, identification begins with a report generated by the hospital’s inpatient pharmacy service, which typically shows the anti-coagulation regimen for each patient in a given hospital ward. The floor pharmacist or nurse can identify who is not on prophylaxis, assess risk factors and contraindications, and act to mitigate the situation—for example, by placing a call to the patient’s attending physician. Other sites have developed more sophisticated reports that capture information about relative risk for DVT and the absence or presence of contraindications to pharmacologic prophylaxis; these features reduce the effort required to investigate each case.

How to Learn More

The Quality Track at the 2008 Annual Meeting (April 3-5 at the Manchester Hyatt, San Diego, Calif.) includes a session on the “VTE Collaborative Experience” (1-2:25 p.m. April 4). Drs. Maynard and Stein will discuss the initiative, as will collaborative members, who will describe key successes and innovations that furthered their efforts to establish effective VTE prevention programs. Questions about the VTEPC and the Annual Meeting session can be directed to vtepc@hospitalmedicine.org.

Update on Hand-Offs

SHM task force continues to refine transitions-of-care checklist

by Shannon Roach

Among hospitalists and other organizations, there has been an increasing interest surrounding the improvement of the quality of patient care, especially within transitions of care and patient discharge. As the leader in the hospital medicine field, SHM continues to support and lead initiatives for the improvement of care as related to patient discharge and transitions. Last year’s creation of the Hand-Offs Communication Task Force (HCTF) has upheld SHM’s position of being dedicated to the promotion of the highest quality care for all hospitalized patients.

Derived from members of the Hospital Quality and Patient Safety Committee and the Education Committee, this task force was led by Vineet Arora, MD, MA, assistant professor of medicine, University of Chicago. Collaborating with her were Preetha Basaviah, MD, clinical instructor, Stanford University Medical Center in Calif.; Dan Dressler, MD, instructor of medicine, Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta; Lakshmi Halasyamani, MD, associate chairperson of the Department of Internal Medicine at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Sunil Kripalani, MD, MSc, an instructor at Emory University in Atlanta; and Efren Manjarrez, MD, assistant clinical professor of medicine at the Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami.

This team set out to create a formally recognized set of recommendations for ensuring optimum communication and continuity of care at the end of a medical professional’s shift or a patient’s change in service.

The task force’s first step was to determine what information was available as a basis for these recommendations. Though data were limited, the group decided that recommendations for effective hand-offs would be broken into three categories: program policy, verbal exchange, and content exchange.

As the need for more evidence-based data for the improvement of in-hospital hand-offs became clear, the group decided a valuable follow-up approach for these recommendations would be to incorporate a research agenda into the findings. This proposal suggests a need for a rigorous evaluation of these recommendations, with an emphasis on controlled interventions. It also encourages the development of patient-based outcomes sensitive to hand-off quality.

As a test run for these recommendations, the HCTF presented its findings at Hospital Medicine 2007 in Dallas. Their session “Developing Communications and Hand-Off Standards for Hospitalists” drew a passionate response. During this session they unveiled a checklist outlining the important elements of an in-hospital physician hand-off. Attendees were encouraged to offer feedback and vote on proposed hand-off elements. They also were encouraged to submit suggestions if they believed something was missing.

Using that feedback, the group produced a final draft of recommendations and distributed it to a multidisciplinary team of experts for a final review. On the panel were Linda Bell, RN, MSN; Emily Patterson, PhD; Erik Van Eaton, MD; and Arpana Vidyarthi, MD. These experts reflect the perspective of nonphysician members of the hospital community, representing the interests of technology, nursing, human factors research, and hospital medicine. They reviewed the paper and hand-off recommendations by participating in conference calls in which they were asked to comment on questions regarding the working paper. These discussions gave the task force invaluable, candid feedback adopted into the working paper to create a more robust set of recommendations.

The final product was reviewed by SHM’s Board of Directors in January; a dissemination plan is in progress. If these recommendations are endorsed by an institution or a hospitalist group, they will act as a guide to ensure the coordination of hand-offs and the mangement of important clinical care issues.

Through their research and interactions with a large number of individuals concerned with this issue, the HCTF discovered that the quality improvement of patient transitions is a complex, global issue. They believe this checklist of hand-off elements is essential to these efforts.

Venous thromboembolic (VTE) disease, ranging from asymptomatic deep-vein thrombosis (DVT) to massive pulmonary embolism (PE), is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in hospitalized patients. Almost all hospitalized patients are at risk for VTE, and the literature suggests approximately half of all VTEs are hospital-acquired.

Hospitalists are ideally positioned to reduce the incidence of preventable VTEs, both by using known best practices to improve care delivered to their own patients, and, more importantly, by leading hospitalwide efforts that improve care for all patients at their home institutions.

In recognition of this important clinical issue and the role hospitalists can play in addressing it, SHM launched the VTE Prevention Collaborative (VTEPC) in January 2007. The program offers individualized assistance to hospitalists wishing to take the lead in this area.

The VTEPC offers two technical assistance options. Individuals interested in securing ongoing support for their planned or active VTE prevention projects can enroll in the mentoring program. This allows a full year of access to and support from SHM mentors with VTE and quality-improvement (QI) expertise. Mentoring occurs in eight telephone calls, during which mentors offer individualized assistance on any topics, tasks, or barriers commonly encountered in designing, implementing, and evaluating a VTE prevention project.

An on-site consultation program is designed for individuals interested in securing expert evaluation and input on a VTE prevention program but who don’t feel they need ongoing, longitudinal support. In this program, SHM consultants with VTE and QI expertise visit applicants’ hospitals to evaluate active or planned VTE prevention programs. The consultation visits feature a structured evaluation of the site’s strengths and resources, barriers to improvement, and the design and function of active or proposed VTE prevention interventions.

For both programs, support and instruction are organized around the VTE QI workbook, “Preventing Hospital-Acquired Venous Thromboembolism: A Guide for Effective Quality Improvement,” SHM’s step-by-step guide for developing a VTE prevention program. SHM secured the services of Greg Maynard, MD, and Jason Stein, MD, to provide mentoring and conduct consultation visits. Drs. Maynard and Stein have led successful local VTE prevention QI projects, hold QI leadership positions, and have taught QI and VTE prevention principals to local and national audiences. Dr. Maynard is head of the Division of Hospital Medicine and associate clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Stein is a hospitalist at Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital, assistant professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine, and director of quality improvement for the Emory Hospital Medicine Unit.

Both were also instrumental in developing SHM’s online VTE Resource Room and the VTE QI workbook.

Strong Responses

Twenty-seven hospitalists enrolled in the VTEPC in its first year of operation, 24 in the mentoring program and three in the consultation program.

Enrollees have broad experience in VTE prevention and QI. Some enrollees have been in practice for two years, others more than 25 years. Some fill QI leadership roles in their hospitals or hospital medicine groups. For others the VTE prevention project is their first experience leading a QI effort. Regional representation (19 states), hospital system representation (18 systems), hospital size (135 to 700 staffed beds), and hospital type (academic centers, community teaching hospitals, and community hospitals) are also broad. One enrollee works at a long-term acute care hospital, all others work at acute-care hospitals.

What They Said

Participants in the mentoring and consultation programs have reported that the support they’ve received has been enormously helpful.

According to feedback from one participant, support from the mentoring program made the potentially overwhelming prospect of launching a hospitalwide improvement effort much more manageable: “The prospect of launching a multihospital VTE Prevention Protocol was extremely daunting; however, with the help of my SHM mentor, we stand ready to pilot the program within the week. Our mentor carefully constructed a step-by-step process that allowed me to investigate the scope of the problem at the local level and develop a protocol that was embraced by our administration and physicians. He supplied me with resources and knowledge that allowed me to successfully handle multiple obstacles that arose along the way. What we have accomplished will have an enormous impact on the quality of care that we provide for our patients.”

Other participants have reported that having access to objective input from an external expert can help transform a slow-developing or ineffective prevention program. As one participant put it: “Mentoring through SHM’s VTE Prevention Collaborative has been an invaluable experience. Through monthly phone calls and frequent e-mails, our mentor focused our previously ineffective efforts and guided us to develop a streamlined tool that was custom-fit to the workflow at our hospital. He has saved us tremendous frustrations by directing us to the appropriate resources in our institution to accomplish tasks we would have attempted ourselves. Since our first phone call, he has been both our coach and cheerleader. The processes and techniques that he has taught us are applicable to every quality endeavor we engage in.”

What Impressed Experts

Drs. Maynard and Stein have been enormously impressed by what VTEPC members have achieved. “What is most impressive to me is how all these hospitalist project leaders in different settings are overcoming a wide variety of intuitional barriers, medical staff barriers, infrastructure barriers—all the obstacles that can challenge the typical big QI project,” says Dr. Maynard. He notes that not only are participants utilizing all the basic QI principles in all the ways that were outlined in the QI workbook, but they also are coming up with innovations and approaches beyond what the workbook authors envisioned.

“We learn from them as they come up with innovations to meet their own challenges,” Dr. Stein says. “It shows the resilience and flexibility of the QI framework. If you really work in your local setting on these things with the improvement framework in mind you can get by almost any barrier.” Drs. Maynard and Stein have noted that participants have been able to design and implement VTE prevention programs at a pace that far outstrips what the two mentors achieved at their home institutions.

Many participants have found real-time ways to identify patients who are not on prophylaxis but should be. At many sites, identification begins with a report generated by the hospital’s inpatient pharmacy service, which typically shows the anti-coagulation regimen for each patient in a given hospital ward. The floor pharmacist or nurse can identify who is not on prophylaxis, assess risk factors and contraindications, and act to mitigate the situation—for example, by placing a call to the patient’s attending physician. Other sites have developed more sophisticated reports that capture information about relative risk for DVT and the absence or presence of contraindications to pharmacologic prophylaxis; these features reduce the effort required to investigate each case.

How to Learn More

The Quality Track at the 2008 Annual Meeting (April 3-5 at the Manchester Hyatt, San Diego, Calif.) includes a session on the “VTE Collaborative Experience” (1-2:25 p.m. April 4). Drs. Maynard and Stein will discuss the initiative, as will collaborative members, who will describe key successes and innovations that furthered their efforts to establish effective VTE prevention programs. Questions about the VTEPC and the Annual Meeting session can be directed to vtepc@hospitalmedicine.org.

Update on Hand-Offs

SHM task force continues to refine transitions-of-care checklist

by Shannon Roach

Among hospitalists and other organizations, there has been an increasing interest surrounding the improvement of the quality of patient care, especially within transitions of care and patient discharge. As the leader in the hospital medicine field, SHM continues to support and lead initiatives for the improvement of care as related to patient discharge and transitions. Last year’s creation of the Hand-Offs Communication Task Force (HCTF) has upheld SHM’s position of being dedicated to the promotion of the highest quality care for all hospitalized patients.

Derived from members of the Hospital Quality and Patient Safety Committee and the Education Committee, this task force was led by Vineet Arora, MD, MA, assistant professor of medicine, University of Chicago. Collaborating with her were Preetha Basaviah, MD, clinical instructor, Stanford University Medical Center in Calif.; Dan Dressler, MD, instructor of medicine, Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta; Lakshmi Halasyamani, MD, associate chairperson of the Department of Internal Medicine at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Sunil Kripalani, MD, MSc, an instructor at Emory University in Atlanta; and Efren Manjarrez, MD, assistant clinical professor of medicine at the Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami.

This team set out to create a formally recognized set of recommendations for ensuring optimum communication and continuity of care at the end of a medical professional’s shift or a patient’s change in service.

The task force’s first step was to determine what information was available as a basis for these recommendations. Though data were limited, the group decided that recommendations for effective hand-offs would be broken into three categories: program policy, verbal exchange, and content exchange.

As the need for more evidence-based data for the improvement of in-hospital hand-offs became clear, the group decided a valuable follow-up approach for these recommendations would be to incorporate a research agenda into the findings. This proposal suggests a need for a rigorous evaluation of these recommendations, with an emphasis on controlled interventions. It also encourages the development of patient-based outcomes sensitive to hand-off quality.

As a test run for these recommendations, the HCTF presented its findings at Hospital Medicine 2007 in Dallas. Their session “Developing Communications and Hand-Off Standards for Hospitalists” drew a passionate response. During this session they unveiled a checklist outlining the important elements of an in-hospital physician hand-off. Attendees were encouraged to offer feedback and vote on proposed hand-off elements. They also were encouraged to submit suggestions if they believed something was missing.

Using that feedback, the group produced a final draft of recommendations and distributed it to a multidisciplinary team of experts for a final review. On the panel were Linda Bell, RN, MSN; Emily Patterson, PhD; Erik Van Eaton, MD; and Arpana Vidyarthi, MD. These experts reflect the perspective of nonphysician members of the hospital community, representing the interests of technology, nursing, human factors research, and hospital medicine. They reviewed the paper and hand-off recommendations by participating in conference calls in which they were asked to comment on questions regarding the working paper. These discussions gave the task force invaluable, candid feedback adopted into the working paper to create a more robust set of recommendations.

The final product was reviewed by SHM’s Board of Directors in January; a dissemination plan is in progress. If these recommendations are endorsed by an institution or a hospitalist group, they will act as a guide to ensure the coordination of hand-offs and the mangement of important clinical care issues.

Through their research and interactions with a large number of individuals concerned with this issue, the HCTF discovered that the quality improvement of patient transitions is a complex, global issue. They believe this checklist of hand-off elements is essential to these efforts.

Venous thromboembolic (VTE) disease, ranging from asymptomatic deep-vein thrombosis (DVT) to massive pulmonary embolism (PE), is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in hospitalized patients. Almost all hospitalized patients are at risk for VTE, and the literature suggests approximately half of all VTEs are hospital-acquired.

Hospitalists are ideally positioned to reduce the incidence of preventable VTEs, both by using known best practices to improve care delivered to their own patients, and, more importantly, by leading hospitalwide efforts that improve care for all patients at their home institutions.

In recognition of this important clinical issue and the role hospitalists can play in addressing it, SHM launched the VTE Prevention Collaborative (VTEPC) in January 2007. The program offers individualized assistance to hospitalists wishing to take the lead in this area.

The VTEPC offers two technical assistance options. Individuals interested in securing ongoing support for their planned or active VTE prevention projects can enroll in the mentoring program. This allows a full year of access to and support from SHM mentors with VTE and quality-improvement (QI) expertise. Mentoring occurs in eight telephone calls, during which mentors offer individualized assistance on any topics, tasks, or barriers commonly encountered in designing, implementing, and evaluating a VTE prevention project.

An on-site consultation program is designed for individuals interested in securing expert evaluation and input on a VTE prevention program but who don’t feel they need ongoing, longitudinal support. In this program, SHM consultants with VTE and QI expertise visit applicants’ hospitals to evaluate active or planned VTE prevention programs. The consultation visits feature a structured evaluation of the site’s strengths and resources, barriers to improvement, and the design and function of active or proposed VTE prevention interventions.

For both programs, support and instruction are organized around the VTE QI workbook, “Preventing Hospital-Acquired Venous Thromboembolism: A Guide for Effective Quality Improvement,” SHM’s step-by-step guide for developing a VTE prevention program. SHM secured the services of Greg Maynard, MD, and Jason Stein, MD, to provide mentoring and conduct consultation visits. Drs. Maynard and Stein have led successful local VTE prevention QI projects, hold QI leadership positions, and have taught QI and VTE prevention principals to local and national audiences. Dr. Maynard is head of the Division of Hospital Medicine and associate clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Stein is a hospitalist at Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital, assistant professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine, and director of quality improvement for the Emory Hospital Medicine Unit.

Both were also instrumental in developing SHM’s online VTE Resource Room and the VTE QI workbook.

Strong Responses

Twenty-seven hospitalists enrolled in the VTEPC in its first year of operation, 24 in the mentoring program and three in the consultation program.

Enrollees have broad experience in VTE prevention and QI. Some enrollees have been in practice for two years, others more than 25 years. Some fill QI leadership roles in their hospitals or hospital medicine groups. For others the VTE prevention project is their first experience leading a QI effort. Regional representation (19 states), hospital system representation (18 systems), hospital size (135 to 700 staffed beds), and hospital type (academic centers, community teaching hospitals, and community hospitals) are also broad. One enrollee works at a long-term acute care hospital, all others work at acute-care hospitals.

What They Said

Participants in the mentoring and consultation programs have reported that the support they’ve received has been enormously helpful.

According to feedback from one participant, support from the mentoring program made the potentially overwhelming prospect of launching a hospitalwide improvement effort much more manageable: “The prospect of launching a multihospital VTE Prevention Protocol was extremely daunting; however, with the help of my SHM mentor, we stand ready to pilot the program within the week. Our mentor carefully constructed a step-by-step process that allowed me to investigate the scope of the problem at the local level and develop a protocol that was embraced by our administration and physicians. He supplied me with resources and knowledge that allowed me to successfully handle multiple obstacles that arose along the way. What we have accomplished will have an enormous impact on the quality of care that we provide for our patients.”

Other participants have reported that having access to objective input from an external expert can help transform a slow-developing or ineffective prevention program. As one participant put it: “Mentoring through SHM’s VTE Prevention Collaborative has been an invaluable experience. Through monthly phone calls and frequent e-mails, our mentor focused our previously ineffective efforts and guided us to develop a streamlined tool that was custom-fit to the workflow at our hospital. He has saved us tremendous frustrations by directing us to the appropriate resources in our institution to accomplish tasks we would have attempted ourselves. Since our first phone call, he has been both our coach and cheerleader. The processes and techniques that he has taught us are applicable to every quality endeavor we engage in.”

What Impressed Experts

Drs. Maynard and Stein have been enormously impressed by what VTEPC members have achieved. “What is most impressive to me is how all these hospitalist project leaders in different settings are overcoming a wide variety of intuitional barriers, medical staff barriers, infrastructure barriers—all the obstacles that can challenge the typical big QI project,” says Dr. Maynard. He notes that not only are participants utilizing all the basic QI principles in all the ways that were outlined in the QI workbook, but they also are coming up with innovations and approaches beyond what the workbook authors envisioned.

“We learn from them as they come up with innovations to meet their own challenges,” Dr. Stein says. “It shows the resilience and flexibility of the QI framework. If you really work in your local setting on these things with the improvement framework in mind you can get by almost any barrier.” Drs. Maynard and Stein have noted that participants have been able to design and implement VTE prevention programs at a pace that far outstrips what the two mentors achieved at their home institutions.

Many participants have found real-time ways to identify patients who are not on prophylaxis but should be. At many sites, identification begins with a report generated by the hospital’s inpatient pharmacy service, which typically shows the anti-coagulation regimen for each patient in a given hospital ward. The floor pharmacist or nurse can identify who is not on prophylaxis, assess risk factors and contraindications, and act to mitigate the situation—for example, by placing a call to the patient’s attending physician. Other sites have developed more sophisticated reports that capture information about relative risk for DVT and the absence or presence of contraindications to pharmacologic prophylaxis; these features reduce the effort required to investigate each case.

How to Learn More

The Quality Track at the 2008 Annual Meeting (April 3-5 at the Manchester Hyatt, San Diego, Calif.) includes a session on the “VTE Collaborative Experience” (1-2:25 p.m. April 4). Drs. Maynard and Stein will discuss the initiative, as will collaborative members, who will describe key successes and innovations that furthered their efforts to establish effective VTE prevention programs. Questions about the VTEPC and the Annual Meeting session can be directed to vtepc@hospitalmedicine.org.

Update on Hand-Offs

SHM task force continues to refine transitions-of-care checklist

by Shannon Roach

Among hospitalists and other organizations, there has been an increasing interest surrounding the improvement of the quality of patient care, especially within transitions of care and patient discharge. As the leader in the hospital medicine field, SHM continues to support and lead initiatives for the improvement of care as related to patient discharge and transitions. Last year’s creation of the Hand-Offs Communication Task Force (HCTF) has upheld SHM’s position of being dedicated to the promotion of the highest quality care for all hospitalized patients.

Derived from members of the Hospital Quality and Patient Safety Committee and the Education Committee, this task force was led by Vineet Arora, MD, MA, assistant professor of medicine, University of Chicago. Collaborating with her were Preetha Basaviah, MD, clinical instructor, Stanford University Medical Center in Calif.; Dan Dressler, MD, instructor of medicine, Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta; Lakshmi Halasyamani, MD, associate chairperson of the Department of Internal Medicine at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Sunil Kripalani, MD, MSc, an instructor at Emory University in Atlanta; and Efren Manjarrez, MD, assistant clinical professor of medicine at the Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami.

This team set out to create a formally recognized set of recommendations for ensuring optimum communication and continuity of care at the end of a medical professional’s shift or a patient’s change in service.

The task force’s first step was to determine what information was available as a basis for these recommendations. Though data were limited, the group decided that recommendations for effective hand-offs would be broken into three categories: program policy, verbal exchange, and content exchange.

As the need for more evidence-based data for the improvement of in-hospital hand-offs became clear, the group decided a valuable follow-up approach for these recommendations would be to incorporate a research agenda into the findings. This proposal suggests a need for a rigorous evaluation of these recommendations, with an emphasis on controlled interventions. It also encourages the development of patient-based outcomes sensitive to hand-off quality.

As a test run for these recommendations, the HCTF presented its findings at Hospital Medicine 2007 in Dallas. Their session “Developing Communications and Hand-Off Standards for Hospitalists” drew a passionate response. During this session they unveiled a checklist outlining the important elements of an in-hospital physician hand-off. Attendees were encouraged to offer feedback and vote on proposed hand-off elements. They also were encouraged to submit suggestions if they believed something was missing.

Using that feedback, the group produced a final draft of recommendations and distributed it to a multidisciplinary team of experts for a final review. On the panel were Linda Bell, RN, MSN; Emily Patterson, PhD; Erik Van Eaton, MD; and Arpana Vidyarthi, MD. These experts reflect the perspective of nonphysician members of the hospital community, representing the interests of technology, nursing, human factors research, and hospital medicine. They reviewed the paper and hand-off recommendations by participating in conference calls in which they were asked to comment on questions regarding the working paper. These discussions gave the task force invaluable, candid feedback adopted into the working paper to create a more robust set of recommendations.

The final product was reviewed by SHM’s Board of Directors in January; a dissemination plan is in progress. If these recommendations are endorsed by an institution or a hospitalist group, they will act as a guide to ensure the coordination of hand-offs and the mangement of important clinical care issues.

Through their research and interactions with a large number of individuals concerned with this issue, the HCTF discovered that the quality improvement of patient transitions is a complex, global issue. They believe this checklist of hand-off elements is essential to these efforts.

Heart failure (HF) afflicts almost 5 million individuals in the United States and ranks among the most costly inpatient conditions, with hospital costs for 2004 estimated between $14 and $20 billion. Approximately 25% of heart failure patients are readmitted within 30 days of hospital discharge, and more than 50% of elderly patients with HF are readmitted to the hospital within six months. SHM believes that hospitalists are well positioned to improve adherence to published guidelines for the care of congestive HF and are ideal candidates for developing and studying strategies for providing safer, more effective care for patients hospitalized with HF.

In May 2005, SHM disseminated a request for applications for the Heart Failure Research Program. The program, which was made possible by an unrestricted educational grant from Scios, Inc. (a biopharmaceutical company), offered two-year grants to support prospective evaluations of hospitalist-led initiatives designed to improve quality of care for patients hospitalized with HF. A 15-member scientific review group, chaired by Andrew Auerbach, MD, and convened in conjunction with the SHM Research Committee and the SHM Executive Board, reviewed the 18 submitted applications and selected two excellent studies for funding.

The Cardiology Quality of Care Study is a collaborative effort between the sections of General Internal Medicine and Cardiology and the University of Chicago Hospitals. Under the direction of principal investigator Chad Whelan, MD, the study team will evaluate a cost-effective system of improving compliance with the well-validated Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) quality indicators for HF. Trained research assistants will perform chart reviews on all hospitalized patients with HF. If a chart review reveals that certain CMS measures have not been met, the research assistant will send a notification e-mail to the clinical team to alert them that a potentially indicated therapy has not been implemented. Follow-up telephone interviews with patients and post-discharge hospital chart abstractions will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. The process may be an effective and inexpensive method for hospitals across the country to use to improve compliance with evidence-based, guideline-supported quality of care measures.

The second study, Improving Quality and Efficiency of Heart Failure Care at Hospital Discharge, is being conducted at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation under the direction of Dr. Christopher Phillips. This single-center, randomized, controlled trial will study changes in 30-day readmission rates resulting from an educational intervention designed to enhance self-care behavior in patients discharged with a primary diagnosis of HF. An RN cardiovascular specialist will contact patients weekly by phone for four weeks after hospital discharge. The calls will focus on identifying and correcting deficits in knowledge, motivation, and behavior with respect to HF self-care. Study findings may improve our understanding of patients’ ability to translate HF education and counseling into motivation to adhere to recommended HF self-care behaviors during the post-discharge period. Improved insight into these processes will inform efforts aimed at optimizing the transition from acute hospital care to home, a process that is a major determinant of early readmission.

Both studies are evaluating novel, practical, reproducible means of improving HF care. We look forward to seeing the results. TH

Heart failure (HF) afflicts almost 5 million individuals in the United States and ranks among the most costly inpatient conditions, with hospital costs for 2004 estimated between $14 and $20 billion. Approximately 25% of heart failure patients are readmitted within 30 days of hospital discharge, and more than 50% of elderly patients with HF are readmitted to the hospital within six months. SHM believes that hospitalists are well positioned to improve adherence to published guidelines for the care of congestive HF and are ideal candidates for developing and studying strategies for providing safer, more effective care for patients hospitalized with HF.

In May 2005, SHM disseminated a request for applications for the Heart Failure Research Program. The program, which was made possible by an unrestricted educational grant from Scios, Inc. (a biopharmaceutical company), offered two-year grants to support prospective evaluations of hospitalist-led initiatives designed to improve quality of care for patients hospitalized with HF. A 15-member scientific review group, chaired by Andrew Auerbach, MD, and convened in conjunction with the SHM Research Committee and the SHM Executive Board, reviewed the 18 submitted applications and selected two excellent studies for funding.

The Cardiology Quality of Care Study is a collaborative effort between the sections of General Internal Medicine and Cardiology and the University of Chicago Hospitals. Under the direction of principal investigator Chad Whelan, MD, the study team will evaluate a cost-effective system of improving compliance with the well-validated Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) quality indicators for HF. Trained research assistants will perform chart reviews on all hospitalized patients with HF. If a chart review reveals that certain CMS measures have not been met, the research assistant will send a notification e-mail to the clinical team to alert them that a potentially indicated therapy has not been implemented. Follow-up telephone interviews with patients and post-discharge hospital chart abstractions will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. The process may be an effective and inexpensive method for hospitals across the country to use to improve compliance with evidence-based, guideline-supported quality of care measures.

The second study, Improving Quality and Efficiency of Heart Failure Care at Hospital Discharge, is being conducted at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation under the direction of Dr. Christopher Phillips. This single-center, randomized, controlled trial will study changes in 30-day readmission rates resulting from an educational intervention designed to enhance self-care behavior in patients discharged with a primary diagnosis of HF. An RN cardiovascular specialist will contact patients weekly by phone for four weeks after hospital discharge. The calls will focus on identifying and correcting deficits in knowledge, motivation, and behavior with respect to HF self-care. Study findings may improve our understanding of patients’ ability to translate HF education and counseling into motivation to adhere to recommended HF self-care behaviors during the post-discharge period. Improved insight into these processes will inform efforts aimed at optimizing the transition from acute hospital care to home, a process that is a major determinant of early readmission.

Both studies are evaluating novel, practical, reproducible means of improving HF care. We look forward to seeing the results. TH

Heart failure (HF) afflicts almost 5 million individuals in the United States and ranks among the most costly inpatient conditions, with hospital costs for 2004 estimated between $14 and $20 billion. Approximately 25% of heart failure patients are readmitted within 30 days of hospital discharge, and more than 50% of elderly patients with HF are readmitted to the hospital within six months. SHM believes that hospitalists are well positioned to improve adherence to published guidelines for the care of congestive HF and are ideal candidates for developing and studying strategies for providing safer, more effective care for patients hospitalized with HF.

In May 2005, SHM disseminated a request for applications for the Heart Failure Research Program. The program, which was made possible by an unrestricted educational grant from Scios, Inc. (a biopharmaceutical company), offered two-year grants to support prospective evaluations of hospitalist-led initiatives designed to improve quality of care for patients hospitalized with HF. A 15-member scientific review group, chaired by Andrew Auerbach, MD, and convened in conjunction with the SHM Research Committee and the SHM Executive Board, reviewed the 18 submitted applications and selected two excellent studies for funding.

The Cardiology Quality of Care Study is a collaborative effort between the sections of General Internal Medicine and Cardiology and the University of Chicago Hospitals. Under the direction of principal investigator Chad Whelan, MD, the study team will evaluate a cost-effective system of improving compliance with the well-validated Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) quality indicators for HF. Trained research assistants will perform chart reviews on all hospitalized patients with HF. If a chart review reveals that certain CMS measures have not been met, the research assistant will send a notification e-mail to the clinical team to alert them that a potentially indicated therapy has not been implemented. Follow-up telephone interviews with patients and post-discharge hospital chart abstractions will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. The process may be an effective and inexpensive method for hospitals across the country to use to improve compliance with evidence-based, guideline-supported quality of care measures.

The second study, Improving Quality and Efficiency of Heart Failure Care at Hospital Discharge, is being conducted at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation under the direction of Dr. Christopher Phillips. This single-center, randomized, controlled trial will study changes in 30-day readmission rates resulting from an educational intervention designed to enhance self-care behavior in patients discharged with a primary diagnosis of HF. An RN cardiovascular specialist will contact patients weekly by phone for four weeks after hospital discharge. The calls will focus on identifying and correcting deficits in knowledge, motivation, and behavior with respect to HF self-care. Study findings may improve our understanding of patients’ ability to translate HF education and counseling into motivation to adhere to recommended HF self-care behaviors during the post-discharge period. Improved insight into these processes will inform efforts aimed at optimizing the transition from acute hospital care to home, a process that is a major determinant of early readmission.

Both studies are evaluating novel, practical, reproducible means of improving HF care. We look forward to seeing the results. TH