Evidence-based Venous Thromboembolism Prophylaxis is Associated With a Six-fold Decrease in Numbers of Symptomatic Venous Thromboembolisms in Rehabilitation Inpatients

Objectives: To measure the impact of a standardized risk assessment tool and specialty-specific, risk-adjusted venous thromboembolism (VTE) order sets on compliance with American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) guidelines and the number of symptomatic VTE as assessed by administrative data. Design: Prospective cohort study. Setting: Academic hospital inpatient rehabilitation unit. Patients and Participants: All patients on the rehabilitation unit. Methods and Interventions: Assessment of VIE risk factors and evaluated admission VTE prophylaxis orders before and after implementation of an ACCP guideline based, specialty-specific VTE risk assessment, and prophylaxis order set by using a standardized data collection form. Main Outcome Measures: Discharge diagnostic codes for VTE and pulmonary embolism were tracked by ICD-9 (International Classification of Diseases, 9th edition) discharge diagnosis codes for the 12 months before and 36 months after the intervention. Results: Before implementation of the VIE order set, 27% of patients received VIE prophylaxis in compliance with the 2004 ACCP VIE guidelines. By following implementation of specialty-specific, risk-adjusted VTE order sets, compliance increased to 98%. In the year before VIE order-set implementation, the number of VTEs per admission was 49 per 1000. By following implementation, the number of VTEs steadily decreased each year to 8 per 1000 in 2007 (chi(2) = 14.985; P = .0001). Conclusions: Implementation of a standardized VTE risk assessment tool and prophylaxis order set resulted in a substantial improvement in compliance with ACCP guidelines for VTE prophylaxis and was associated with a 6-fold reduction in the number of symptomatic VTEs in a hospital-based rehabilitation unit. PM R 2011;3:11.11-1115