ASH to honor quality improvement champions
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ASH has announced its three inaugural quality improvement champions.
The initiative recognizes clinicians who implemented intervention-based projects designed to improve care quality by addressing underuse or overuse of procedures or tests, as well as the implementation of guideline recommendations to ensure safety and improve health care delivery.
The honorees are Josie Fernandez Sanchez, MD, of Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine; Paolo Lopedote, MD, of St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center and Boston University; and Asinamai M. Ndai, BPharm, MS, of University of Florida Health Physicians.
Fernandez Sanchez worked with colleagues to standardize ED management of anemia due to heavy menstrual bleeding.
Through this effort — which included collaboration with hospitalists, emergency medicine physicians, gynecologists and pediatric hematologists — they developed an evidence-based algorithm to evaluate patients and manage symptoms. Algorithm implementation resulted in 100% adherence to recommended therapy.
Lopedote and colleagues determined that nearly three-quarters of patients at their institution who had chronic liver disease and abnormal platelet counts or blood clotting underwent unnecessary platelet or fresh frozen plasma transfusions before paracentesis, an action that can delay care, increase risk and lead to higher costs.
Lopedote and colleagues established a hospital task force and created flyers to educate staff that guidelines recommend against transfusing fresh frozen plasma or platelets prior to procedures with low risk of bleeding, including paracentesis.
In a subsequent 10-month period, the rate of platelet or plasma transfusion prior to paracenteses in this population declined by 75%.
Ndai and colleagues established a quality improvement initiative to reduce delays in administering factor replacement therapy to people with hemophilia who present to the ED. The effort trained ED physicians on hemophilia guidelines, established a specialized medication order set in the electronic health record and created a rapid triage system.
The average time a patient with hemophilia in the ED waited to receive factor replacement therapy declined from 5.63 hours prior to the intervention to 3.15 hours after.
The three honorees will speak during a session at this year’s ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition, which will be held Dec. 7-10 in San Diego.
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