Background: Pediatric hospital-acquired (HA) venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a vexing problem with improvement efforts hampered by lack of robust surveillance methods to establish accurate rates of HA-VTE.
Methods: At a freestanding children's hospital, a multidisciplinary team worked to develop a comprehensive surveillance strategy for HA-VTE. Starting with diagnosis codes, we implemented complementary detection methods, including clinical and radiology data, to develop a robust surveillance system. HA-VTE events were tracked by using descriptive statistics and a statistical process control chart. Detection methods were evaluated via retrospective application of each method to every identified HA-VTE. Initial detection method was tracked.
Results: A total of 68 HA-VTE events were identified and the median number of events per 1000 patient days increased from 0.18 to 0.34. No single detection method would have identified all events. Each detection method initially identified HA-VTE events.
Conclusions: Implementation of multiple detection methods has optimized timely detection of HA-VTE. This allows the establishment of a reliable baseline rate, enabling quality improvement efforts to address HA-VTE.
Copyright © 2017 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.