Improving Pediatric Asthma Care in a Community Emergency Department

The paradox of pediatric emergency care is that while most children are seen in general emergency departments (EDs) by general emergency physicians, only a small fraction of the patients seen by most general emergency physicians are children. Improved adherence to evidence-based guidelines has been shown to improve outcomes, and this is certainly true in children with asthma, but quality improvement efforts have not been tested in general community EDs.

Aiming to improve pediatric asthma care and decrease transfers, a general community ED collaborated with a nearby pediatric ED that had implemented an evidence-based clinical pathway for asthma. The general community ED implemented a quality improvement process that included the clinical path…