Sunday, October 25, 2009

H1N1 - How We Can Help

I've been asleep at the wheel, and I'll be the first to admit it. In a conversation with Elizabeth Cowboy this week, she pointed out that an ideal use of our critical care collaborative would be to track cases of H1N1 influenza in our ICUs. Those of us who participate in the Midwest Critical Care Collaborative represent the lion's share of ICU beds in the state of Kansas and in several metropolitan areas, including Wichita, Topeka, Kansas City, and Lincoln. We are in an ideal position to volunteer information of use to officials at the state, county, and regional levels as they and we respond to the growing epidemic. Some of us have been involved at the state and local levels, preparing ourselves for a surge in requirements for ventilators and ICU beds, all the while wondering when and if such a surge would hit and wondering how we would actually know when it did. This is a mechanism whereby we can help ourselves.

I have set up a web-based form to track the important information. The form will ask about 4 types of patients: confirmed H1N1, likely H1N1 not yet confirmed, seasonal influenza, and post-influenza pneumonia. We will assess how many of these sorts of patients are in our ICUs and how many of them are ventilated. We would like to collect this information weekly, by 5 PM Wednesday for the next 8 or 10 months, or until the epidemic has ultimately dissipated. The information will be shared with state and county epidemiologists on a hospital by hospital basis, and published on our web site by region or county. As of now, we have not planned to track deaths, but that is possible, if collaborative members desire it.

My plan is to send reminder emails every week, to collate what comes in by Wednesday, and to have current information posted by Thursday of every week on the mwcritcare web site. The reporting form is live now, and we are ready to rock and roll. Follow the links on the web site (www.mwcritcare.org) to find the active form.

It may be that government officials are coming by this information in another way, but it seems to me that having the info available at least helps us to achieve our goal of helping one another to reach the highest possible quality of critical care for our patients. In this case, if some of the more dire predictions come to fruition, the highest achievable quality could literally mean that more midwesterners survive, because we help each other.

The survey form doesn't ask for a lot of information, and it should be easily completed by almost anyone. Member hospitals may want to ask one person to do it every week. If we get surveys from more than one person at any hospital, we'll probably send emails to the individuals to determine which data to use (unless they are identical). The first questions in the survey ask about numbers of ICU beds and numbers of ventilators in your hospital. Those likely will not change a lot over time.

If you receive my periodic emails, then your hospital is included. Please consider getting together with your colleagues to provide the information every week. Some of you monitor ICU beds at other hospitals; please consider either providing their information or working with people in those hospitals to get them plugged in to the collaborative and providing their own information. If you have colleagues at hospitals that you don't see listed on the mwcritcare web site, please ask them to get involved.

The data collection form is at our web site, www.mwcritcare.org. Look for page links at the bottom of the home page and follow the H1N1 link. If anyone has questions, post them to this blog or contact me at sqsimpson@mwcritcare.org.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Anyone can comment, but please be polite to everyone.