Literature Collection

INTRODUCTION: Behavioral symptoms in hospitalized older adults with cognitive impairment often lead to physical and chemical restraint use, despite associated harms. Patient-centered care models show promise in reducing restraint use but are rarely implemented in routine practice. This project implemented CoCare-CI, a clinical innovation to address behavioral symptoms in hospitalized older adults with cognitive impairment. METHODS: CoCare-CI was implemented on a 24-bed ACE unit in a 128-bed community hospital from January 2023 to August 2024 by a multidisciplinary team led by a geriatric nurse practitioner (GNP). CoCare-CI emphasized (1) systematic screening and assessment of mentation, and (2) individualized management plans for delirium or dementia. Implementation followed a phased, cyclical approach with champions supporting process improvement. Baseline restraint data (January-August 2023) were compared to intervention data (September 2023-August 2024). Primary outcomes included physical and chemical restraint use; process measures included documentation rates of the Confusion Assessment Method (CAM), CAM-Severity (CAM-S), Six-Item Cognitive Impairment Test (6CIT), and 4Ms checklist. RESULTS: Among 949 patients (mean age 81.5 years, 59% female, 80.6% White), 34.1% had cognitive impairment at baseline, including 22.6% with dementia and 11.5% with a significant 6CIT score (≥ 8). Documentation rates improved for CAM (68%-86%), CAM-S (0%-79%), 6CIT (0%-89%), and 4Ms checklist (0%-96%). Physical restraint use decreased from 4.3% to 0.7%, and chemical restraint use dropped from 7.6% to 2.3%. Most restraint use (84.2%, 16/19) was deemed potentially avoidable, with root cause analysis revealing that 78.6% (11/14) of patients with restraint orders had moderate to severe dementia with behavioral symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: CoCare-CI is associated with reductions in reduced physical and chemical restraint use, demonstrating potential for dissemination within routine clinical practice. Future research should assess sustainability, broader applicability, and integration of additional 4Ms components.

BACKGROUND: Mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders are chronic pediatric conditions, and their prevalence has been on the rise over recent decades. Affected children have long-term health sequelae and a decline in health-related quality of life. Due to the lack of a validated database for pharmacoepidemiological research on selected mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders, there is uncertainty in their reported prevalence in the literature. OBJECTIVES: We aimed to evaluate the accuracy of coding related to pediatric mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders in a large integrated health care system's electronic health records (EHRs) and compare the coding quality before and after the implementation of the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) coding as well as before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: Medical records of 1200 member children aged 2-17 years with at least 1 clinical visit before the COVID-19 pandemic (January 1, 2012, to December 31, 2014, the ICD-9-CM coding period; and January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2019, the ICD-10-CM coding period) and after the COVID-19 pandemic (January 1, 2021, to December 31, 2022) were selected with stratified random sampling from EHRs for chart review. Two trained research associates reviewed the EHRs for all potential cases of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), major depression disorder (MDD), anxiety disorder (AD), and disruptive behavior disorders (DBD) in children during the study period. Children were considered cases only if there was a mention of any one of the conditions (yes for diagnosis) in the electronic chart during the corresponding time period. The validity of diagnosis codes was evaluated by directly comparing them with the gold standard of chart abstraction using sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, the summary statistics of the F-score, and Youden J statistic. κ statistic for interrater reliability among the 2 abstractors was calculated. RESULTS: The overall agreement between the identification of mental, behavioral, and emotional conditions using diagnosis codes compared to medical record abstraction was strong and similar across the ICD-9-CM and ICD-10-CM coding periods as well as during the prepandemic and pandemic time periods. The performance of AD coding, while strong, was relatively lower compared to the other conditions. The weighted sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value for each of the 5 conditions were as follows: 100%, 100%, 99.2%, and 100%, respectively, for ASD; 100%, 99.9%, 99.2%, and 100%, respectively, for ADHD; 100%, 100%, 100%, and 100%, respectively for DBD; 87.7%, 100%, 100%, and 99.2%, respectively, for AD; and 100%, 100%, 99.2%, and 100%, respectively, for MDD. The F-score and Youden J statistic ranged between 87.7% and 100%. The overall agreement between abstractors was almost perfect (κ=95%). CONCLUSIONS: Diagnostic codes are quite reliable for identifying selected childhood mental, behavioral, and emotional conditions. The findings remained similar during the pandemic and after the implementation of the ICD-10-CM coding in the EHR system.

PURPOSE: AIM-Back is an embedded pragmatic clinical trial (ePCT) with cluster randomization designed to increase access and compare the effectiveness of two different non-pharmacological care pathways for low back pain (LBP) delivered within the Veteran Administration Health Care System (VAHCS). This manuscript describes baseline characteristics of AIM-Back participants as well as the representativeness of those referred to the AIM-Back program by sex, age, race, and ethnicity, relative to Veterans with low back pain at participating clinics. PARTICIPANTS: To be eligible for AIM-Back, Veterans were referred to the randomized pathway at their clinic by trained primary care providers (Referral cohort). Veterans from the Referral cohort that participated in the study included: 1) an Electronic Health Record (EHR) sample of Veterans enrolled in the program (i.e., attended initial AIM-Back visit with no consent required) and a Survey sample of Veterans that were consented for further study. Descriptive statistics for age, race, ethnicity, sex, high-impact chronic pain (HICP), a comorbidity measure, post-traumatic stress diagnosis (PTSD) and opioid exposure were reported for the Referral cohort and by sample; mean baseline PROMIS pain interference, physical function and sleep disturbance scores were reported by sample. Additional measures of pain, mental health and social risk were reported on the Survey sample. Participation to prevalence ratios (PPRs) were calculated for sex, age, race, and ethnicity by clinic to describe representativeness of the Referral cohort. FINDINGS TO DATE: Across 17 randomized primary care clinics, the Referral cohort included 2767 unique Veterans with n=1817 in the EHR sample, n=996 in the Survey sample and n=799 of the EHR sample (44%) were also in the Survey sample. High rates of HICP were observed in the EHR and Survey samples (>59%). Mean scores (SD) based on self-reported PROMIS Pain Interference (63.2 (6.8), 63.1 (6.6)) and PROMIS Physical Function (37.1 (5.3), 38.1 (5.8)) indicated moderate impairment in the EHR sample and Survey sample respectively. Approximately 10% of the EHR sample had documented opioid use in the year leading up to the AIM-Back referral. At most clinics, older Veterans (>=65 years) were underrepresented in the Referral cohort compared to those with LBP visits at clinics (PPRs < 0.8). FUTURE PLANS: The AIM-Back trial will conduct analysis to examine the comparative effectiveness of the two care pathways and identify individual characteristics that may improve responses to each pathway. The trial is expected to complete 12-month follow-up data collection by December 2024, with subsequent analyses and publications providing insights into optimizing non-pharmacological care for Veterans with LBP. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT04411420 (clinicaltrials.gov).