Does the introduction of a medical emergency team reduce unexpected cardiac arrests and mortality in hospitalized patients?
The implementation of a medical emergency team progressively reduces unexpected cardiac arrests and hospital mortality over several years, highlighting that organizational changes require time to show benefits.
The introduction of a medical emergency team was associated with a progressive decline of unexpected cardiac arrests within 2 yrs, and of unexpected mortality within 4 yrs. This suggests that changes to organizational practice take time and benefits may not be immediately obvious. Such changes are reflected in total hospital mortality measured from administrative data and make monitoring simpler in the longer term. Finally, efforts to increase calling of emergency teams should reduce cardiac arrests and mortality.
Santamaria et al. (Thu,) studied this question.