Center for Evidence-based Practice | University of Pennsylvania Health System

AHRQ Redesignates ECRI Institute-Penn Medicine as Evidence-based Practice Center
New 5-year contract supports the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in its efforts to disseminate scientific research of important healthcare topics

January 30, 2015 — The ECRI Institute-Penn Medicine Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC) was recently redesignated by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to serve as an EPC through 2019. ECRI Institute has maintained this designation since the inception of the EPC program in 1997. The ECRI Institute-Penn Medicine EPC was established in 2012.

Under the new contract, known as EPC V, the ECRI Institute-Penn Medicine EPC will work with clinicians, policymakers, patients, consumers, and other scientific partners to develop topics and questions for systematic review of the literature, and to promote the synthesis, translation, and dissemination of research evidence. The EPC has reported on a variety of topics, many in the area of cancer, genetic testing, and imaging tests (access free reports).

As part of the new contract, all 13 Evidence-based Practice Centers will be eligible to bid on work to support the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), an independent, volunteer panel of experts in prevention and evidence-based medicine dedicated to improving the health of Americans.

“Since we began working together, we’ve been able to utilize ECRI Institute’s independent, evidence-based research and Penn Medicine’s clinical and academic leadership to advance research to improve patient care,” says Karen Schoelles, MD, SM, director of the ECRI Institute-Penn Medicine EPC. “This new contract inspires us to build on our previous collaborations and break into new research territory.

”“We look forward to continuing our efforts to transform patient care delivery as we work alongside ECRI Institute and AHRQ,” says Craig A. Umscheid, MD, MSCE, director of the Penn Medicine Center for Evidence-based Practice and senior associate director of the ECRI Institute-Penn Medicine EPC.

The EPC will work with Insight Policy Research, a small woman-owned disadvantaged business.

To learn more about ECRI Institute’s work in evaluating health technologies through the Evidence-based Practice Center, membership in the Health Technology Assessment Information Service, and customized consultation and support for clinical practice guideline development, e-mail htais@ecri.org, or call (610) 825-6000, ext. 5519.

Penn Medicine Experts Urge Expansion of Federal Incentives to Improve Patient Care Quality and Safety
Focusing on structural changes in addition to individual clinical outcomes would bring greater gains

January 13, 2015 — In an invited commentary published online by JAMA Internal Medicine, Patrick J. Brennan, MD, chief medical officer of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, and Craig A. Umscheid, MD, MSCE, director of Penn’s Center for Evidence-based Practice, recommend that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services shift its use of financial incentives from an exclusive focus on preventing specific clinical outcomes toward encouraging the creation of hospital-wide structures that promote the translation of research evidence into clinical practice to improve the quality and safety of patient care.

In 2008, Medicare implemented the Hospital-Acquired Conditions Initiative, a policy denying incremental payment for eight complications of hospital care, also known as “never events.” Another study published in JAMA Internal Medicine led by Teresa Waters, PhD, of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, found that after the new federal policy was introduced, central line-associated bloodstream infections fell by 11 percent and catheter-associated urinary tract infections fell by ten percent. But there was no significant reduction in hospital-acquired pressure ulcers and serious inpatient falls.

The study authors suggested that the difference in the policy’s effects on infections as compared to falls and pressure ulcers were the result of the evidence available at the time to guide hospitals to improve these outcomes.

But the Penn authors disagreed. Instead, they suggested that the difference in the policy’s effect had more to do with the challenge of improving complex quality outcomes such as pressure ulcers and inpatient falls, when compared to the easier-to-improve outcome of infections. Unlike infection prevention efforts, which often target care providers and involve changes to a limited set of procedures such as catheter insertion and occur in closely monitored settings such as intensive care units, efforts at reducing falls and pressure ulcers are much more complex. They require multidisciplinary, patient-centered collaboration across the entire spectrum of care, not just critical care.

“Incentives are indeed important,” says Brennan. “But they must be the right incentives. There was good-quality evidence available to underpin fall and pressure ulcer prevention efforts when the CMS initiative was launched. Yet neither of these measures has significantly improved. This may be because it’s simply not possible to reduce falls and pressure ulcers by taking a few clear-cut steps, as in the case of reducing infections. Instead, broader and more comprehensive structural changes within hospitals should be considered. Such efforts would reduce an even larger number of never events than by simply tackling them one at a time.”

Hospitals should aim to bridge what’s called the “knowing-doing gap,” Umscheid says. “That’s the disconnect between what we know works based on the best available evidence and what we actually practice. To bridge the gap, we are not advocating abandoning incentives that focus on individual clinical outcomes. Instead we are urging federal regulators to also encourage institution-wide structural changes. We believe these changes can create the necessary conditions for solving difficult problems such as falls and pressure ulcers -- and others as well.”

The structural changes suggested by Brennan and Umscheid are the fabric of Penn Medicine’s successful quality improvement program. They include:

Penn Medicine's "Sepsis Sniffer" Generates Faster Sepsis Care and Suggests Reduced Mortality: Early identification and intervention lead to better results for hospital inpatients

October 9, 2014 — An automated early warning and response system for sepsis developed by Penn Medicine experts has resulted in a marked increase in sepsis identification and care, transfer to the ICU, and an indication of fewer deaths due to sepsis. A study assessing the tool is published online in the Journal of Hospital Medicine.

Sepsis is a potentially life-threatening complication of an infection; it can severely impair the body’s organs, causing them to fail. There are as many as three million cases of severe sepsis and 750,000 resulting deaths in the United States annually. Early detection and treatment, typically with antibiotics and intravenous fluids, is critical for survival.

The Penn prediction tool, dubbed the “sepsis sniffer,” uses laboratory and vital-sign data (such as body temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure) in the electronic health record of hospital inpatients to identify those at risk for sepsis. When certain data thresholds are detected, the system automatically sends an electronic communication to physicians, nurses, and other members of a rapid response team who quickly perform a bedside evaluation and take action to stabilize or transfer the patient to the intensive care unit if warranted.

The study developed the prediction tool using 4,575 patients admitted to the University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS) in October 2011. The study then validated the tool during a pre-implementation period from June to September 2012, when data on admitted patients was evaluated and alerts triggered in a database, but no notifications were sent to providers on the ground. Outcomes in that control period were then compared to a post-implementation period from June to September 2013. The total number of patients included in the pre and post periods was 31,093.

In both the pre- and post-implementation periods, four percent of patient visits triggered the alert. Analysis revealed 90 percent of those patients received bedside evaluations by the care team within 30 minutes of the alert being issued. In addition, the researchers found that the tool resulted in:

• A two to three-fold increase in orders for tests that could help identify the presence of sepsis

• A 1.5 to two-fold increase in the administration of antibiotics and intravenous fluids

• An increase of more than 50 percent in the proportion of patients quickly transferred to the ICU

• A 50 percent increase in documentation of sepsis in the patients’ electronic health record

The study found a lower death rate from sepsis and an increase in the number of patients successfully discharged home, although these findings did not reach statistical significance.

“Our study is the first we’re aware of that was implemented throughout a multihospital health system,” said lead author Craig A. Umscheid, MD, MSCE, director of Penn’s Center for Evidence-based Practice. “Previous studies that have examined the impact of sepsis prediction tools at other institutions have only taken place on a limited number of inpatient wards. The varied patient populations, clinical staffing, practice models, and practice cultures across our health system increases the generalizability of our findings to other health care settings.”

Umscheid also noted that the tool could help triage patients for suitability of ICU transfer. “By better identifying those with sepsis requiring advanced care, the tool can help screen out patients not needing the inevitably limited number of ICU beds.”

In addition to Umscheid, the other Penn co-authors are Joel Betesh, MD; Christine Vanzandbergen, PA, MPH; Asaf Hanish, MPH; Gordon Tait, BS; Mark E. Mikkelsen, MD, MSCE; Benjamin French, PhD; and Barry D. Fuchs, MD, MS.

Dr. Umscheid’s contribution to this project was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, grant # UL1TR000003.