Medical emergency teams at The Ottawa Hospital: the first two years

Medical emergency teams (MET) merge earlier-than-conventional treatment of worrisome vital signs with a skilled resuscitation response team, and may possibly reduce cardiac arrests, postoperative complications, and hospital mortality.

At the two sites of The Ottawa Hospital, MET was introduced in January 2005. We reviewed call diagnoses, interventions, and outcomes from MET activity, and examined outcomes [cardiac arrests, intensive care unit (ICU) admissions, and readmissions] from Health Records and the ICU database. We compared the first fully operational year, 2006, with pre-MET years, 2003-4.

In 5,741 patient encounters, the teams (nurse, respiratory therapist, and intensivist) responded to 1,931 calls over two years, predominantly for high-risk in-patients. As well, there were 3,810 follow-up visits to these patients and to recently discharged ICU patients. In 2006, there were 40.3 calls/team/1,000 hospital admissions, with 71.2% of in-patient ICU admissions preceded by MET calls. Patient illness severity scores decreased from 4.9 +/- 2.6 (mean +/- SD) before implementing MET to 2.9 +/- 2.3 (P < 0.0001) after MET interventions. Intervention on the respiratory system was performed on 72% of patients. Admission to the ICU occurred in 27% of MET patients. Compared with the pre-MET period, we observed decreases in: cardiac arrests (from 2.53 +/- 0.8 to 1.3 +/- 0.4/1,000 admissions, P < 0.001); ICU admissions from in-patient nursing units/month (42.3 +/- 7.3 to 37.6 +/- 5.1, P = 0.05); readmissions after ICU discharge/month (13.5 +/- 5.1 to 8.8 +/- 4.5, P = 0.01); and readmissions within 48 hr of ICU discharge/month (4.4 +/- 2.4 to 2.8 +/- 1.0 ICU readmissions/month, P = 0.01).

Successful implementation of MET reduces patient morbidity and ICU resource utilization.