Project Impact provides answers
Benchmarking data available for ICUs
If you are looking for data to help you compare your intensive care unit’s (ICU) practice patterns and patient outcomes with others across the nation, Project Impact may be the answer.
Project Impact was developed by the Anaheim, CA-based Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) in conjunction with Tri-Analytics, a Bel Air, MD-based medical database management company.
The program was designed to provide quantitative answers to questions such as, "What percentage of our ICU patients suffer from cardiac or infectious complications?" and "How do our patients’ severity of illness compare with other critical care units?" according to Tri-Analytics’ general manager Meg Wilson.
Participating ICUs — currently 70 — pay an annual fee and lease special Project Impact software, says Wilson. Once enrolled, they collect data based on a data set developed by SCCM. The Project Impact data set includes:
- descriptions of the participating hospital, unit, and management paradigm;
- core individual patient data, including demographics, severity of illness, diagnosis, procedures, complications, therapies, resource utilization, and outcomes;
- optional patient data (e.g., such as that needed to implement APACHE II or III scoring systems or to describe other aspects of patient care);
- approximately 100 locally defined patient data elements.
As they are gathered, an ICU’s data are entered into and stored within special Project Impact database/reporting software. From that point, reports designed to provide data for assessing ICU quality, effectiveness, efficiency, and other factors can be generated at the local (or individual ICU) level.
After being stripped of patient and physician personal identifiers, local data are then transferred to a central database. In return, participants receive a quarterly report that compares and benchmarks their local data with data from similar participating units, providing an empirical basis for self-assessment.
"The reports stimulate improvements," says Wilson. "For example, you may see that the percentage of patients who self-extubate in your unit is much higher than the norm," she explains. "Once you have determined why this is happening, you can then institute a new protocol, so that these self-extubation numbers can drop."
The Project Impact software contains numerous checks and filters to ensure valid data, says Wilson. "The software will not allow closure of an individual record until it is completely and accurately entered." And, she emphasizes, "The data from the central database have been stripped of personal identifiers and aggregated, so that they can never be traced back to individuals or institutions."
All of these safeguards are intended to help Project Impact achieve its strategic goal, adds Wilson, which is "to take care of the person in the [ICU] bed and improve the outcome."
[For more information, contact:
• Meg Wilson, Project Impact General Manager, Society of Critical Care Medicine, 8101 E. Kaiser Blvd., Suite 300, Anaheim, CA 92808. Telephone: (714) 282-6066. E-mail: [email protected]. Web site: www.sccm.org/impact/impact_home_set.html]
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