Effect of a rapid response team on patient outcomes in a community-based teaching hospital

Rapid response teams have been adopted across hospitals to reduce the rate of inpatient cardiopulmonary arrest. Yet, data are not uniform on their effectiveness across university and community settings.

The objective of our study was to determine the impact of rapid response teams on patient outcomes in a community teaching hospital with 24/7 resident coverage.

Our retrospective chart review of preintervention-postintervention data included all patients admitted between January 2004 and April 2006. Rapid response teams were initiated in March 2005. The outcomes of interest were inpatient mortality, unexpected transfer to the intensive care unit, code blue (cardiac or pulmonary arrest) per 1000 discharges, and length of stay in the intensive care unit.

Rapid response teams were activated 213 times during the intervention period. There was no statistically significant difference in inpatient mortality (3.13% preintervention versus 2.91% postintervention), code blue calls (3.09 versus 2.89 per 1000 discharges), or unexpected transfers of patients to the intensive care unit (15.8% versus 15.5%).

The implementation of a rapid response team did not appear to affect overall mortality and code blue calls in a community-based hospital with 24/7 resident coverage.