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Modifying the rapid response team concept for a small facility

Accreditation Connection, May 15, 2006

Ben Chaska, MD, LLC, is medical director and patient safety officer at St. Peter (MN) Community Hospital, a 17-bed facility that serves a small college town.

Instead of implementing a full RRT, the hospital took the concept and adapted it to its facility by devising "Recognize, Respond, and Treat."

When patients' conditions change so that the hospital can no longer care for them, it must transfer them to a higher-care facility. To keep patients in the hospital and out of ambulances or medical helicopters, the hospital adopted an early warning system.

"We moved upstream and [said that] if anyone has a vital sign out of the acceptable range, the nurses are trained to contact the patient's physician or physician on-call," says Chaska. "The result is [that] the physician comes in or makes an order."

The organization created a form that the nurses complete so when they contact the physician about the patient's change in status, they simply consult the form when explaining exactly what is happening with the patient.

The goal is to reduce the number of patients transferred to the larger hospital in the next county, or worse, airlifted to the Twin Cities. So far, the hospital has reduced the need for transfers by 28%.

"We save $6,200 per transfer and reduced our mortality rate," says Chaska.

Adapted from the May issue of Medical Staff Briefing, an HCPro newsletter.

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