Improving Compliance with the CMS SEP-1 Sepsis Bundle at a Community-Based Teaching Hospital Emergency Department.

Introduction: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) designed Hospital Quality Initiatives (HQI) to assure delivery of quality health care for institutions receiving Medicare payments. Like many teaching institutions, the SEP-1 compliance rates at McLaren Oakland in Pontiac fluctuated monthly and were not achieving institutional target expectations.

Methods: The project team designed a Sepsis Macro and a Sepsis Order Set in the electronic medical record system.

Provider Driven Follow-Up in a Chest Pain Accelerated Diagnostic Protocol: Round Two of the PDSA Cycle in a Multidisciplinary Quality Improvement Patient Safety Project.

Context: In 2016, the McLaren Oakland Department of Emergency Medicine developed and implemented a Chest Pain Accelerated Diagnostic Protocol (CP-ADP) to identify patients presenting to the emergency department (ED) with chest pain who were at low risk for acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and appropriate for outpatient follow-up. The evaluation of the QI/PS project demonstrated that only 47% of the patients discharged from the ED under the CP-ADP received outpatient follow-up. In response, a second round of the PDSA cycle modified the CP-ADP to add a multidisciplinary provider driven follow-up.

A Novel 'Train the Trainer' Emergency Medicine Resident Point-of-Care Ultrasound Course: A Feasibility Study.

Context: A novel multi-site 'train the trainer' point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) training course was designed to better meet the graduate medical education learning needs of a geographically dispersed consortium of 16 community-based Michigan emergency medicine (EM) residency programs. The specific aim of this study was to explore the feasibility of using volunteer EM physicians who were novices with ultrasound techniques as instructors for a POCUS course. Additionally, the authors evaluated the effectiveness and consistency of a POCUS course delivered over multiple sites to enhance EM residents' ultrasound knowledge and skill acquisition.

Ensuring Patient Safety in Emergency Peripheral Ultrasound-Guided Nerve Blocks: An Evaluation of a Quality Improvement/Patient Safety Initiative.

Context: During the past two decades, bedside ultrasound has revolutionized the practice of emergency medicine. Physicians are now expected to be competent in utilizing ultrasound skills, for patients presenting with conditions ranging from trauma to skin evaluations. The overall purpose of this quality improvement/patient safety (QIPS) project was to evaluate the effectiveness of a pair of five-hour, hands-on didactic/training sessions, aimed at preparing a sample of emergency medicine physicians, residents and medical students to perform peripheral ultrasound-guided nerve blocks.

Utilizing PDSA Cycle in Implementing a Chest Pain Accelerated Diagnostic Protocol.

Context: The authors in the Emergency Department (ED) at McLaren Oakland utilized the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) model to implement, evaluate and incrementally modify a Chest Pain Accelerated Diagnostic Protocol (CPADP) using the History, EKG, Age, Risk Factors, Troponin (HEART) Score at their institution. The objective of this study was to evaluate the ability of patients who presented to the ED with chest pain and fell into the low risk category based on their HEART Score to receive adequate outpatient follow-up for their chest pain.

Methods: Modifying protocols implemented at other institutions, in 2016 the authors developed CP-ADP utilizing the HEART Score to risk-stratify patients presenting to the ED with chest pain as low, moderate or high risk for major adverse cardiac events (MACE).

Trauma Dictations in the Emergency Department: A Quality Improvement/Patient Safety Project.

Context: Trauma patients frequently represent a unique and challenging patient population in emergency medicine care settings. The policy of the McLaren Oakland Emergency Department (ED) is to have the treatment of all Level 1 and Level 2 trauma activations dictated by the ED resident. This policy is intended to facilitate both patient safety through clear communication between multiple medical services and quality improvement through reporting trauma specific quality metrics to third party agencies.