Study Objective Direct medical oversight (DMO), where emergency medical services (EMS) clinicians contact a physician for real-time medical direction, is used by many EMS systems across the United States. Our objective was to characterize the recommendations made by DMO during out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA) and to determine their effect on EMS transport decisions and patient outcomes.Methods This is a secondary analysis of DMO call recordings from OHCA cases in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area from January 1, 2018 to February 28, 2021. Data extracted from the audio recordings were linked to OHCA cases in the Portland Cardiac Arrest Epidemiologic Registry (PDX Epistry). The primary outcomes are recommendations made by DMO: transport, continued field resuscitation, or termination of resuscitation (TOR). Secondary outcomes include EMS transport decisions, survival to hospital admission, and survival to hospital discharge. We used descriptive statistics, unpaired t-tests, and chi-square tests as appropriate for data analysis.Results There were 239 OHCA cases for which DMO was contacted by EMS. The median time from EMS arrival to DMO contact was 25.6 min, and EMS requested TOR for 72.0% of patients. Compared to patients where EMS requested further treatment advice, patients for whom EMS requested TOR had poor prognostic signs including older age, asystole as an initial rhythm, and lower rates of transient return of spontaneous circulation prior to DMO call compared with cases where EMS did not request TOR. DMO recommended transport, continued field resuscitation, or TOR in 21.8%, 18.0%, and 60.2% of patients, respectively. Of the 239 patients, 59 (24.7%) were ultimately transported by EMS to the hospital, 14 (5.9%) survived to admission, and only 1 patient (0.4%) survived to hospital discharge and had an acceptable neurologic outcome (Cerebral Performance Category score of 2).Conclusions Patients for whom EMS contacts DMO for further treatment advice or requesting field TOR after prolonged OHCA resuscitation have poor outcomes, even when DMO recommends transport or further resuscitation, and may represent opportunities to reduce unnecessary DMO contact or patient transports. More research is needed to determine which OHCA patients benefit from DMO contact.

Objective: Complicated UTIs (cUTIs) are defined by a heterogenous group of risk factors that place the patient at increased risk of treatment failure in whom urine cultures are recommended. We evaluated the ordering practices for urine cultures for cUTI patients and patient outcomes in an academic hospital setting. Methods: Retrospective chart review of adults of 18 years and older with cUTIs diagnosed in a single academic emergency department (ED). We reviewed 398 patient encounters based on a range of ICD-10 diagnosis codes consistent with cUTI between 1/1/2019 and 6/30/2019. The definition of cUTI consisted of thirteen subgroups composited from existing literature and guidelines. The primary outcome was ordering a urine culture for cUTI. We also assessed impact of the urine culture results and compared clinical course severity and readmission rates between cultured and not cultured patients. Results: During this period, the ED had 398 potential cUTI visits based on ICD-10 code, of which 330 (82.9%) met the study inclusion criteria for cUTI. Of these cUTI encounters, clinicians failed to obtain urine cultures in 92 (29.8%). Of the 217 cUTI with cultures, 121 (55.8%) demonstrated sensitivity to original treatment, 10 (4.6%) demonstrated the need to change antimicrobial coverage, 49 (22.6%) demonstrated the presence of contamination, and 29 (13.4%) demonstrated insignificant growth. Patients with cUTI who received cultures experienced higher rates of admission to both ED observation (33.2% vs 16.3%, p = 0.003) and the hospital (41.9% vs 23.8%, p= 0.003) compared to those with missed cultures. Admitted cUTI patients experienced greater length of hospital stay when cultures were obtained (3.23 vs 1.53 days, p < 0.001). Readmission rates for patients with cUTI discharged from the ED within 30 days were 4.0% for patients with urine cultures and 7.3% for patients without urine cultures (p= 0.155). Conclusion: Over a quarter of cUTI patients in this study did not receive a urine culture. Further studies are needed to assess if improving adherence to urine culturing practices for cUTIs will impact clinical outcomes.(c) 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

When a patient is admitted to the hospital from the emergency department (ED), the ED clinician passes on relevant clinical information to the admitting team to transition care, a process known as patient hand-off and commonly referred to as ‘calling report’. This information exchange between clinical teams is not only important for care continuity but also signifies a transition of care.However, there are unique challenges in this hand-off process given the unpredictability of the busy ED environment, ED boarding and discontinuity in physician, nursing and transportation workflows. These challenges create the potential for gaps in communication and can create patient safety concerns, particularly if a patient is transported to an inpatient bed before hand-off takes place.We set out to determine whether introducing a visual cue on the electronic health record (EHR) ED trackboard to communicate that report had been given would improve hand-off compliance. We sought to improve the utility of the visual cue and compliance of calling report prior to patient transport through a series of several Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) cycles.Baseline compliance using the ‘Report Called’ button prior to implementation of our visual intervention was 9.8%. With staff education alone, compliance rose to 41.3%. However, with an easily recognisable visual cue highlighted on the trackboard and an improved workflow compliance immediately rose to >97% and has been sustained for 84 months. Additionally, we have had zero reported incidents of patients being transported to a hospital bed before physician report was called since implementation.Our study demonstrates that simple visual cues and incorporation of a user-friendly process in the workflow can improve compliance with ensuring report is called prior to patient transfer from the ED. This may have a positive impact on physician communication and patient safety during the admission process.