Escalation process of critical values when these cannot be communicated on first attempt: A hospital-wide process improvement project

Since laboratory critical values reflect such an abnormal pathologic state that there is imminent danger to the patient, it is crucial to deliver the result upon initial call with an escalation process when the initial call cannot occur. In our 8-hospital system, one of the hospitals used the escalation procedure twice as frequently compared with the other hospitals. This work presents hospital-wide quality improvement processes that decreased escalation of critical value calls so as to reach the same proportion of escalated calls compared to other hospitals in the system.