Reducing avoidable chest pain admissions and implementing high sensitivity troponin testing
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Published version
Author(s)
Bhatti, Y
Stevenson, A
Weerasuriya, S
Khan, Sadia
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
NHS Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments see 0.5 million patients presenting witha cardiac conditioneach year. The accurate assessment of chest pain and subsequent diagnosisor exclusion of myocardial infarction (MI) represents a significant challenge; with important consequences on patient outcome and healthcare resources.We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of patients admitted with cardiac chest pain to a busy district general hospitalin London.The criteria used by physicians to admit patients for furthercardiac investigations,were measured against national guidance on chest pain assessment and diagnosis of MI. We found that poor adherence to guidance, unsuitable patient pathways and inappropriate diagnostic tools at thepoint of presentation led to unnecessary inpatient admissions to hospital. Quality improvement methods were usedwith the aimto reduce avoidableadmissions to hospitalin patients presenting withchest pain.We describe asystemto implement new high sensitivity troponin testing into legacy chest pain pathways.This was achieved through localeducationof national institute for health and care excellence (NICE)guidance, the use of patient proformas and the creationof twonew chest pain pathway arms to enable physicians to streamline patients for appropriate inpatient or outpatient care. As result of these changes,we reduced non-compliance with NICE guidance by 83% and achieved a 42% reduction in avoidable chest pain admissions. Overall the improvements made by this project were sustained over 2 years and saved£21,000 per monthin avoidable admissions.
Date Issued
2019-12-16
Date Acceptance
2019-11-09
Citation
BMJ Open Quality, 2019, 8 (4)
ISSN
2399-6641
Publisher
BMJ Publishing Group
Journal / Book Title
BMJ Open Quality
Volume
8
Issue
4
Copyright Statement
© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2019. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
License URL
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN e000629
Date Publish Online
2019-12-16