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Improving Glycemic Control Safely in Non-Critical Care Patients: A Collaborative Systems Approach in Nine Hospitals.
Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2017 Apr;43(4):179-188
Authors: Maynard GA, Childers D, Holdych J, Kendall H, Hoag T, Harrison K
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Practice variations in insulin management and glycemic adverse events led nine Dignity Health hospitals to initiate a collaborative effort to improve hypoglycemia, uncontrolled hyperglycemia, and glycemic control.
METHODS: Non-critical care adult inpatients with ≥4 point-of-care blood glucose (BG) readings in a ≥2-day period were included. Balanced glucometric goals for each hospital were individualized to improve performance by 10%-20% from baseline or achieve top performance derived from Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) benchmarking studies. Baseline measures (2011) were compared to mature results (postintervention, 2014). Protocols for insulin management and hypoglycemia prevention were piloted at one facility and were then spread to the cohort. Interventions included standardized order sets, education, mentoring from physician experts, feedback of metrics, and measure-vention (coupling measurement of patients "off protocol" with concurrent intervention to correct lapses in care).
RESULTS: The day-weighted mean BG for the cohort improved by 11.4 mg/dL (95% confidence interval [CI]: 11.0-11.8]; all nine sites improved. Eight of the sites reduced severe hyperglycemic days, and the percentage of patient-days with any BG > 299 mg/dL for the total cohort improved from 11.6% to 8.8% (relative risk, 0.76 [95% CI: 0.74-0.78]). The percentage of patient-days with any BG < 70 mg/dL remained unchanged at 3.6%. Eight of the sites either reduced hypoglycemia by 20% or achieved SHM best-quartile rates.
CONCLUSION: Multihospital improvements in glycemic control and severe hyperglycemia without significant increases in hypoglycemia are feasible using portable low-cost toolkits and metrics.
PMID: 28325206 [PubMed - in process]
There remains NO EVIDENCE that intervention on glucose levels has any benefit in medicine patients outside the ICU. The best evidence in the ICU is that tight control leads to worse outcomes. Someone needs to do the trial showing benefit before agencies and societies adopt some arbitrary glucose threshold as a marker of poor care.