Effect of a rapid response team on patient outcomes in a community-based teaching hospital.
BACKGROUND
Rapid response teams have been adopted across hospitals to reduce the rate of inpatient cardiopulmonary arrest. Yet, data are not uniform on their effectiveness across university and community settings.


OBJECTIVE
The objective of our study was to determine the impact of rapid response teams on patient outcomes in a community teaching hospital with 24/7 resident coverage.


METHODS
Our retrospective chart review of preintervention-postintervention data included all patients admitted between January 2004 and April 2006. Rapid response teams were initiated in March 2005. The outcomes of interest were inpatient mortality, unexpected transfer to the intensive care unit, code blue (cardiac or pulmonary arrest) per 1000 discharges, and length of stay in the intensive care unit.


RESULTS
Rapid response teams were activated 213 times during the intervention period. There was no statistically significant difference in inpatient mortality (3.13% preintervention versus 2.91% postintervention), code blue calls (3.09 versus 2.89 per 1000 discharges), or unexpected transfers of patients to the intensive care unit (15.8% versus 15.5%).


CONCLUSIONS
The implementation of a rapid response team did not appear to affect overall mortality and code blue calls in a community-based hospital with 24/7 resident coverage.
Ankur
A
Segon
Shahryar
S
Ahmad
Yogita
Y
Segon
Vivek
V
Kumar
Harvey
H
Friedman
Muhammad
M
Ali