Improving Quality and Efficiency in Pediatric Emergency Department Behavioral Health Care

INTRODUCTION: Many children with behavioral health concerns increasingly utilize the emergency department for assessment and care. These visits are increasing in frequency, length, and cost, further stressing already limited resources. To improve the quality of care in this population, we developed a multidisciplinary improvement initiative to decrease the length of stay by 10% (from 5.2 hours), increase suicide screening to 90%, and improve patient and family experience by 10% (from 89.7). METHODS: We leveraged a multidisciplinary team to map care processes, standardize suicide risk screening, optimize staffing, and develop a brochure to demystify patients’ and families’ visits. We developed dashboards and a call-back system following discharge to understand engagement in post-acute care plans. We utilized run charts to identify signals of nonrandom variation. RESULTS: We reduced overall length of stay from 5.2 to 4 hours, improved patient experience scores from 89.7 to 93.2, and increased the suicidality screening rate from 0% to 94%. There was no change in the 72-hour return rate in this population. CONCLUSIONS: Engagement of a multidisciplinary team, with strategic implementation of improvements, measurably improved many aspects of care for pediatric patients with behavioral health crises in the emergency department setting. Recidivism, however, remains unchanged in this population and continues as a goal for future work.