Researchers examined 16,239 pediatric admissions at UPMC’s children’s hospital between January 2006 and December 2013. They compared the accuracy of using vital signs to using PeraHealth’s Pediatric Rothman Index — a patient condition score that includes vital signs, lab tests and nurse assessments — in identifying patients who require urgent intervention with pediatric ICU transfer.
They found that the use of vital signs resulted in false-positive identification of serious events nearly half the time (46 percent). The PRI had a false-positive rate of 1 percent.
“Many symptoms of serious pediatric conditions are also found in common conditions that do not require immediate intervention, and vital signs alone cannot discriminate between the two situations,” said Robert Clark, MD, chief of pediatric critical care medicine at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC. “Our research found the Pediatric Rothman Index to be a favorable electronic trigger for alerting clinicians to the need for rapid response teams, complementing the efforts of our nurses and physicians.”
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