Quality of care for acute abdominal pain in children

OBJECTIVE: To assess quality of care for children presenting with acute abdominal pain using validated indicators. DESIGN: Audit of care quality for acute abdominal pain according to 21 care quality indicators developed and validated in four stages. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Medical records of children aged 1–15 years receiving care in 2012–2013 were sampled from 57 general practitioners, 34 emergency departments (ED) and 28 hospitals across three Australian states; 6689 medical records were screened for visits for acute abdominal pain and audited by trained paediatric nurses. OUTCOME MEASURES: Adherence to 21 care quality indicators and three bundles of indicators: bundle A-History; bundle B-Examination; bundle C-Imaging. RESULTS: Five hundred and fourteen children had 696 visits for acute abdominal pain and adherence was assessed for 9785 individual indicators. The overall adherence was 69.9% (95% CI 64.8% to 74.6%). Adherence to individual indicators ranged from 21.6% for assessment of dehydration to 91.4% for appropriate ordering of imaging. Adherence was low for bundle A-History (29.4%) and bundle B-Examination (10.2%), and high for bundle C-Imaging (91.4%). Adherence to the 21 indicators overall was significantly lower in general practice (62.7%, 95% CI 57.0% to 68.1%) compared with ED (86.0%, 95% CI 83.4% to 88.4%; p<0.0001) and hospital inpatient settings (87.9%, 95% CI 83.1% to 91.8%; p<0.0001). CONCLUSIONS: There was considerable variation in care quality for indicator bundles and care settings. Future work should explore how validated care quality indicator assessments can be embedded into clinical workflows to support continuous care quality improvement.