Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

54 QUALITY IMPROVEMENT & MEASUREMENT Froedtert, Advocate Aurora & others tackle social determinants of health with data-sharing initiative By Jackie Drees F roedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin health network and Advocate Aurora Health are founding members of a health equity collaboration in Wisconsin focused on alleviating social determi- nants of health challenges in patient care, the organizations said March 4. Under the partnership, information and referral services provider Impact will work with the health systems and IT company NowPow to launch Im- pact Connect, a digital platform for partner organizations across various industries, including healthcare, food and housing, to share people's data and better coordinate resources for patients with social determi- nants of health needs. The founding health system partners working on the collaborative in- clude Froedtert, Advocate Aurora Health, Children's Wisconsin and Six- teenth Street Community Health Centers, all based in Milwaukee. Impact Connect will use NowPow's community referral platform to pin- point individuals' social determinants of health needs and match them with resources available in the community. The collaboration started connecting Milwaukee residents to resources this spring. n How UPMC Williamsport cut CAUTI rates with a nurse-led initiative By Mackenzie Bean A nurse-led effort at UPMC Williamsport (Pa.) hospital quickly re- duced catheter-associated urinary tract infections in the intensive care unit, spurring the organization to implement the program hospitalwide, according to a study published April 1 in Critical Care Nurse. UPMC Williamsport reported 13 CAUTI events in 2018, six of which oc- curred in the ICU. The hospital had been aiming for four or fewer CAUTI events annually. To hit this benchmark, the hospital created a CAUTI reduction task force that implemented various quality improvement interventions, including staff education, an electronic daily checklist and a nurse-driven removal protocol for indwelling urinary catheters. UPMC Williamsport's ICU reported zero CAUTI events during the in- tervention period and reduced its CAUTI incidence rate by 1.33 per 1,000 catheter days. Documentation compliance for patient's catheter status also increased from 50 percent to 83.3 percent during the inter- vention period. "One of the strengths of this initiative was the overall simplicity of the interventions," study co-author Holly Shadle, DNP, a nurse practitioner in the neurosurgery department at Williamsport-based UPMC Susque- hanna, said in an April 6 news release. "These interventions were direct and efficient, with few direct costs or necessary equipment, making the process easily adaptable for hospitalwide use." n Vitamin C treatment ineffective against sepsis, another study shows By Erica Carbajal A combination of vitamin C, thiamine and hydrocortisone, previously thought to be a promising treatment option for sepsis, did not improve patient outcomes in a study published Feb. 24 in JAMA. It's the third randomized clinical trial that did not find the treatment to improve patient outcomes for septic shock, NPR reported. In 2017, research led by Paul Marik, MD, indi- cated the combination treatment had exceptional results at reducing the death risk of patients in septic shock. Since then, researchers have been hopeful, putting the treatment to the test. e latest study, published Feb. 23, included 501 patients across 43 intensive care units at U.S. hospitals and found the intravenous treatment failed to improve patient outcomes. At the time of publication, it was the largest study yet to evaluate the efficacy of the treatment, according to NPR. Participants were divided into two groups: 252 received the combination treatment every six hours, while 249 were given a placebo. Results showed there was no significant differ- ence in the amount of ventilation and number of vasopressor-free days between patients who received the treatment and those who were given the placebo. e same was true for 30-day mortality, which was 22 percent among those who received the treatment and 24 percent for those who did not. e randomized clinical trial was expected to include 2,000 patients but was terminated early aer 501 patients were enrolled, the study acknowledged. "We can say with some confidence that if there were such a large effect, we would have seen that in our patients," Jonathan Sevransky, MD, study author, told NPR. n

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