Michigan hospitals reduced the use of chest X-rays on children with respiratory illness by nearly 40%, Medscape reported April 8.
The results, published April 7 in Pediatrics, came from the Michigan Emergency Department Improvement Collaborative, a statewide quality improvement and financial incentive program that launched in March 2019. The program is led by emergency physicians and funded by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Blue Care Network.
Researchers from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor analyzed data from 114,238 visits between May 2017 and April 2023 at 39 EDs across three children’s hospitals, 12 general hospitals with pediatric beds and 24 general hospitals without pediatric beds.
Each year, about 40% of children in the ED who present with airway conditions undergo imaging. These chest scans raise healthcare costs, expose children to unnecessary radiation and can result in inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions, according to the report.
The collective aimed to reduce the number of pediatric patients who received a chest X-ray after presenting with asthma, bronchiolitis and croup
The networkwide use of chest X-rays dropped from 34.3% to 21.1%, and at sites that used chest X-rays as an incentive measure, imaging decreased from 32.5% to 19.2%. Reduced imaging did not have a significant effect on the rate of emergency revisits, but admission rates did increase slightly from 21.5% to 22.5%.
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