Reducing 30-Day All-Cause Acute Exacerbation of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Readmission Rate With a Multidisciplinary Quality Improvement Project

Jonathan Rohde; Abraham Joseph; Binta Tambedou; Nitesh K Jain; Syed Anjum Khan; Salim Surani; Rahul Kashyap; Thoyaja Koritala

doi:10.7759/cureus.19917

Reducing 30-Day All-Cause Acute Exacerbation of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Readmission Rate With a Multidisciplinary Quality Improvement Project

Cureus. 2021 Nov 26;13(11):e19917. doi: 10.7759/cureus.19917. eCollection 2021 Nov.

Authors

Jonathan Rohde¹, Abraham Joseph¹, Binta Tambedou¹, Nitesh K Jain², Syed Anjum Khan², Salim Surani^{3

4

5

6}, Rahul Kashyap⁷, Thoyaja Koritala¹

Affiliations

¹ Hospital Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Mankato, USA.
² Critical Care Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Mankato, USA.
³ Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Texas A&M University, College Station, USA.
⁴ Medicine, University of North Texas Dallas, Dallas, USA.
⁵ Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Associates of Corpus Christi, Corpus Christi, USA.
⁶ Clinical Medicine, University of Houston, Houston, USA.
⁷ Anesthesiology and Critical Care, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, USA.

Abstract

Our objective was to implement a comprehensive quality improvement project to decrease the 30-day readmission rate for all-cause acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD) at a rural Midwestern community hospital in the United States. Prospective data were collected from January 1 to December 31, 2017. A total of 77 patients met the study criteria and were included for analysis. Baseline data analysis involved data for 72 patients from September 1, 2015, to October 1, 2016, and showed a 30.6% all-cause 30-day AECOPD readmission rate. The Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control (DMAIC) model was used for this quality improvement project. All aspects of this project were successfully implemented, and the resulting 30-day all-cause AECOPD readmission rate decreased to 16.9% during the study time frame. Through this comprehensive quality improvement project, the 30-day all-cause AECOPD readmission rate was reduced by 23.7%.

Keywords: checklist; chronic disease management; copd; evidence based medicine; health care quality improvement; quality improvement.