ATCEMS Performance Dashboard > Blood Glucose Check for Altered Mental Status > Performance Measure Definintion: Blood Glucose Check for Altered Mental Status
Performance Measure Definition: Blood Glucose Check for Altered Mental Status
Description: This is the percent of patients with a primary impression indicative of altered mental status (AMS) who receive a blood glucose level (BGL) assessment by EMS.
Desired Outcome: All patients with altered mental status receive a blood glucose level test before arrival at the hospital.
Relevance: Altered mental status can be caused by hypoglycemia (low blood glucose). A blood glucose level assessment is a quick and accurate test that can help paramedics form an accurate impression and care plan for these patients. This is important because hypoglycemia can be reversed easily in the field.
Measure Domain: Clinical Care
Type of Measure: Process
Operational Specifications
Formula Description: Count of patients with a primary impression indicative of altered mental status who have a blood glucose level recorded in the Vital Signs section of the ATCEMS ePCR system, divided by the count of all patients with a primary impression indicative of altered mental status.
The resulting measure is expressed as a percentage.
Unit of Analysis: Patient contact
Population:
- Numerator: Patients with a primary impression indicative of altered mental status who have a documented BGL assessment.
- Denominator: Patients with a primary impression indicative of altered mental status.
Measure Frequency: Fiscal quarter
Minimum Population/Sample: None
Performance Standard: At least 95% of all AMS patients will have a BGL assessment recorded in the Vital Signs section of the ATCEMS ePCR system each fiscal quarter.
Acceptable Quality Level: Performance may not fall below 87% for more than two consecutive quarters or any three quarters in a year.
Interval Description: Not applicable
Reporting Value: Percent of patient contacts
Aggregation: Aggregate patients based on date/time of phone pickup in Communications Center for incident.
Stratification: None
Limitations: Patients for whom medics record findings in locations that are not amenable to standardized reporting tools (e.g. recording findings in narrative or comment fields instead of vital signs fields) will present as a false negative.
Related Measures: None
Notes: None
Reporting
ATCEMS Open Performance Dashboard
- Performance Goal: Blood Glucose Check for Altered Mental Status
- Orientation: External
- Format: Line chart for current and previous fiscal year.
- Update Frequency: Quarterly
- Data Source: Open Data table [EMS - Quarterly OMD Clinical Performance Indicators]
City of Austin Open Data Portal
- Medium: Data table
- Table Name: EMS - Quarterly OMD Clinical Performance Indicators
- Columns: Count – AMS Patients; Count – BGL Test for AMS Patients; Percent – BGL Test for AMS Patients
- Aggregation Level: Fiscal Quarter
- Update Frequency: Quarterly
References
Office of the Medical Director, Austin/Travis County EMS System (2014). “Clinical Performance Indicator 5.5: Blood Glucose Level in Altered Mental Status Patients.”
Metadata
Development Status: Actively reporting
Definition Version: Version A
Revision Date: 2017-01-31
Revised By: David Andersen