Provider Driven Follow-Up in a Chest Pain Accelerated Diagnostic Protocol: Round Two of the PDSA Cycle in a Multidisciplinary Quality Improvement Patient Safety Project

CONTEXT: In 2016, the McLaren Oakland Department of Emergency Medicine developed and implemented a Chest Pain Accelerated Diagnostic Protocol (CP-ADP) to identify patients presenting to the emergency department (ED) with chest pain who were at low risk for acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and appropriate for outpatient follow-up. The evaluation of the QI/PS project demonstrated that only 47% of the patients discharged from the ED under the CP-ADP received outpatient follow-up. In response, a second round of the PDSA cycle modified the CP-ADP to add a multidisciplinary provider driven follow-up. METHODS: After ED discharge, patients in the CP-ADP with provider driven follow-up were contacted by a primary care physician to schedule a follow-up appointment. The premise was that this provider driven follow-up would alleviate navigation of the health care system as a barrier to follow-up. RESULTS: The evaluation of the modified CP-ADP with provider driven follow-up demonstrated that 9 of the 30 patients discharged from the ED were able to be contacted. 21 of the patients were unable to be reached by the phone number they provided. Only 3 patients discharged with provider driven follow-up showed up to follow up appointments. CONCLUSIONS: There were some internal process failures identified that contributed to the low numbers of patients that were successfully contacted. External factors such as patient access to phones and means of communication were also discussed as factors that were originally not considered.