Neuroanesthesiology Quality Improvement Reporting Patterns: A Tertiary Medical Center Experience

Understanding quality improvement (QI) reporting patterns is important for practice-based improvement and for prioritizing QI initiatives. The aim of this project was to identify major domains of neuroanesthesiology QI reports at a single academic institution with 2 hospital-based practice sites.

We retrospectively reviewed institutional QI databases to identify reports from neuroanesthesia cases between 2013 and 2021. Each report was categorized into one of the 16 primary predefined QI domains; the QI report domains were ranked by frequency. Descriptive statistics are used to present the analysis.

Seven hundred three QI reports (3.2% of all cases) were submitted for the 22,248 neurosurgical and neuroradiology procedures during the study period. Most of the QI reports across the institution were in the domain of communication/documentation (28.4%). Both hospitals shared the same 6 top QI report domains, although the relative frequency of each domain differed between the 2 hospitals. Drug error was the top QI report domain at one hospital, representing 19.3% of that site's neuroanesthesia QI reports. Communication/documentation was the top domain at the other hospital, representing 34.7% of that site's reports. The other 4 shared top domains were equipment/device failure, oropharyngeal injury, skin injury, and vascular catheter dislodgement.

The majority of neuroanesthesiology QI reports fell into 6 domains: drug error, communication/documentation, equipment/device failure, oropharyngeal injury, skin injury, and vascular catheter dislodgement. Similar analyses from other centers can guide generalizability and potential utility of using QI reporting domains to inform the development of neuroanesthesiology quality measures and reporting frameworks.