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Biomedical subjects

L Conner

Publications and source records attributed to L Conner.

8 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1995

Measuring and improving physician compliance with clinical practice guidelines. A controlled interventional trial.

OBJECTIVE: To determine factors that may lead physicians not to comply with clinical practice guidelines. DESIGN: Retrospective analysis of patients whose physicians were not compliant with discharge recommendations from a prospective, controlled interventional trial of a guideline to reduce hospital length of stay for patients admitted for chest pain. SETTING: A large community teaching hospital. PARTICIPANTS: Patients admitted with chest pain who were not discharged according to a practice guideline. RESULTS: 79 (34%) of 230 patients with chest pain classified as being at low risk by concurrent or retrospective review were not discharged by day 3 (the guideline recommendation). Of these 79 patients, 33 (42%) were misclassified at concurrent review (10 were falsely classified as being at high risk and 23 were falsely classified as being at low risk). Of 46 correctly classified patients, 11 (14%) were classified as having noncompliant physicians because of health care system inefficiencies. The status of 7 (9%) patients was changed to high risk between initial classification and potential discharge. For 15 patients (19%), no obvious reason for delayed discharge was found, but they had a higher severity of illness than did low-risk patients discharged according to the guideline as measured by mean time-insensitive predictive instrument scores (41.3% +/- [SD] 14.1% compared with 31.5% +/- 14.3%; P = 0.017). In 13 patients (16%), physicians refused to follow the guideline recommendations. CONCLUSIONS: In measuring and attempting to improve physician compliance with a length-of-stay guideline, physician refusal accounts for a small percentage (16%) of noncompliance. Implementation issues, health care system inefficiency, and severity of illness were the predominant reasons why physicians did not comply with guidelines. Our study further supports the principle that clinical practice guidelines should complement rather than be a substitute for physician judgment.

Chest Pain↗
PubMed1995

Total knee replacement. A guideline to reduce postoperative length of stay.

In a retrospective study in an academic, acute-care community hospital, we studied the possible safety and effectiveness of a practice guideline recommending early discharge from the hospital for patients having uncomplicated total knee replacement. Of 206 patients receiving knee replacements, 162 (79%) were classified by the guideline as being at low risk for complications between the 4th and 7th postoperative days. Use of the guideline could have reduced the postoperative length of stay from 7.3 +/- 2.6 days to 4 days for the 112 patients (54%) who became low risk on the 4th postoperative day. Explicit and implicit review of the quality of care determined that 157 patients (96.9%; 95% confidence interval, (92.9%, 99.0%) could have been safely transferred from the acute-care hospital to an appropriate setting when they became classified at low risk between the 4th and 7th postoperative days. Clinical practice guidelines can possibly be used to reduce the postoperative length of acute-care hospital stay for patients having knee replacements. This guideline requires further study in a controlled clinical trial before it can be recommended for use.

Aged↗
PubMed1994

Practice guidelines and reminders to reduce duration of hospital stay for patients with chest pain. An interventional trial.

OBJECTIVE: The acceptability, safety, and efficacy of practice guidelines have rarely been evaluated. Moreover, despite the recent development of guidelines and decision aids for patients admitted to coronary care and intermediate care units, few have been tested in clinical practice. DESIGN: A prospective, controlled clinical trial with an alternate-month design. SETTING: A large teaching community hospital. PATIENTS: Patients admitted to coronary care and intermediate care units with chest pain who were considered at low risk for complications according to a practice guideline (n = 375). INTERVENTION: Physicians caring for patients with chest pain who were at low risk for complications received concurrent, personalized written and verbal reminders regarding a guideline that recommended a 2-day hospital stay. RESULTS: Use of the practice guideline recommendation with concurrent reminders was associated with a 50% to 69% increase in guideline compliance (P < 0.001) and a decrease in length of stay from 3.54 +/- 4.1 to 2.63 +/- 3.0 days (0.91-day reduction, 95% CI, 0.18 to 1.63; P = 0.02) for all patients with chest pain considered at low risk for complications. The intervention was associated with a total (direct and indirect) cost reduction of $1397 per patient (CI, $176 to $2618; P = 0.03). No significant difference was found in the hospital complication rate between patients admitted to the hospital during control and intervention periods, and no significant difference was noted in complications, patient health status, or patient satisfaction when measured 1 month after hospital discharge. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that implementation of this practice guideline through concurrent reminders reduced hospital costs for patients with chest pain considered at low risk for complications. Further study of the guideline is warranted.

Aged↗
PubMed1994

Hip replacement and hip hemiarthroplasty surgery: potential opportunities to shorten lengths of hospital stay.

The potential safety and effectiveness of a practice guideline recommending a 5-day postoperative stay in the acute care hospital for hip surgery patients without clinical findings predictive of a complicated hospital course was studied retrospectively in 230 patients hospitalized for total hip replacement, total hip replacement with osteotomy, or hip hemiarthroplasty. Seventy percent of total hip replacement and hip hemiarthroplasty patients were classified as being at "low risk" for complications by the guideline (161 patients, or 73% of patients who remained hospitalized). Use of the guideline could have reduced the hospital length of stay from 8.4 days (standard deviation 3.3) to 5.9 days for these selected low-risk patients. Moreover, physicians' implicit review determined that 0% of patients (95% confidence interval, 0% to 2.3%) had a complication that would have benefited from continued stay in an acute care hospital after the fifth postoperative day. Our practice guideline may have the potential to safely reduce acute care hospital length of stay for patients recovering after total hip replacement and hip hemiarthroplasty. The guideline will require further study in a prospective clinical trial before it can be recommended for widespread use.

Aged↗
PubMed1994

Reducing lengths of stay in the coronary care unit with a practice guideline for patients with congestive heart failure. Insights from a controlled clinical trial.

Although more than 1,000 medical practice guidelines have been developed, there have been few evaluations of their use in clinical practice or information to judge whether practice guidelines can be used to reduce health care costs. For this reason, the authors conducted a prospective controlled clinical trial with an alternating-month design at a large teaching community hospital to study the use of a practice guideline to promote early transfer of patients admitted to a hospital with congestive heart failure (CHF) from the coronary care unit (CCU) and intermediate care unit to unmonitored beds. The practice guideline was supported by locally derived risk information and recommended consideration of early "step-down" transfer of low-risk patients with CHF 24 hours after hospital admission. Physicians caring for patients identified as "low risk" received concurrent personalized written and verbal reminders concerning the guideline recommendation. Study subjects were patients admitted to a hospital CCU and intermediate care unit between November 1, 1991 and April 30, 1993 with a diagnosis of CHF or pulmonary edema. Ninety patients with CHF were identified as low risk according to the guideline during the study period. Feedback of the practice guideline recommendation was not associated with a significant increase in physician adoption of the guideline or shorter lengths of stay in the CCU or intermediate care unit. Physicians may have compensated for statistically insignificant reductions in monitored lengths of stay by increasing the length of stay in unmonitored beds (1.80 +/- 2.32 to 4.02 +/- 4.09 days, P = .002) and the total length of stay (4.73 +/- 2.43 to 6.71 +/- 5.44 days, P = .03). Quality of patient care, patient outcomes, and patient satisfaction were not affected by the guideline. Our study results suggest that implementation of a locally derived practice guideline for patients with CHF did not result in adoption of the guideline by physicians. The complexity of implementing the guideline, changes in physician practice before the study, and the failure of the guideline to address the continuum of patient care across monitored and unmonitored beds may have accounted for rejection of the guideline. Our experience demonstrates that practice guidelines, whenever possible, should be evaluated in prospective trials before they should be disseminated for widespread use.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

CT scan cerebral hemispheric asymmetries: predictors of recovery from aphasia.

Individual variations in anatomic cerebral asymmetries have been linked with specific neurodevelopmental processes, with patterns of cognitive ability, and with recovery from focal brain damage. The present study investigated relationships between cerebral asymmetries and recovery from aphasia. Aphasic patients (N = 25) were assessed for language recovery for 1 year poststroke, and linear measurements of cerebral asymmetries were performed on CT scans. Increasing left occipital width asymmetry was associated with faster rate of language recovery and with higher final language scores during the first year poststroke. There was, moreover, a tendency for increasing left occipital width asymmetry to be associated with less initial impairment. It is hypothesized that those aspects of neural organization conferring better premorbid language skills are the same factors conferring greater recovery of language skills and that occipital width asymmetry serves as a marker for such individual differences in neural organization.

Aged↗
PubMed1992

Implementing practice guidelines through a utilization management strategy: the potential and the challenges.

Although there is currently much enthusiasm for practice guidelines, far more energy and resources have been expended on their development than on their implementation. A prospective interventional trial was performed using a previously validated explicit practice guideline (decision aid) to decrease the hospital length of stay for selected "low-risk" patients with chest pain. Utilization management (UM) coordinators (RNs) and physicians were chosen to implement the guideline since these resource people are available in most hospitals, allowing for generalization of the experience. With explicit review criteria used for 624 patients, it was found that when the guideline was applied by UM coordinators, it had a sensitivity of 0.85, a specificity of 0.90, a positive predictive value of 0.76, and a negative predictive value of 0.94. The attending physicians failed to override falsely classified low-risk patient recommendations 51% of the time. Implicit review judged that outcome might have theoretically been worsened in two of these patients. Follow-up at 30 days after admission, however, revealed no untoward sequelae in falsely categorized patients discharged according to the guideline. Utilization management appears to be a promising mechanism for guideline implementation that is available in most institutions. However, the accuracy with which UM coordinators implement guidelines should be assessed rigorously. Guidelines should be implemented in an environment of checks and balances in which physicians have the ultimate responsibility for their patients' care.

Adult↗