Handoff Tool Enabling Standardized Transitions Between the Emergency Department and the Hospitalist Inpatient Service at a Major Cancer Center

Communication failures during patient handoff can lead to serious errors. A quality improvement team created a standardized handoff tool/process (DE-PASS: Decisive problem requiring admission, Evaluation time, Patient summary, Acute issues/action list, Situation unfinished/awareness, Signed out to) for admitting patients from the emergency department (ED) to the hospitalist inpatient service of a tertiary cancer center. DE-PASS mirrors the institution’s ED workflow, stratifies patients as stable/urgent/emergent, and establishes requirements for verbal and email communications between providers. Comparison of preintervention and postintervention results from the 1-month pilot revealed that within a 24-hour period, DE-PASS reduced the number of intensive care unit transfers by 58% (P = .393), the number of rapid-response team calls by 39% (P = .637), and time to inpatient order by 31% (P = .004). ED physicians’ and hospitalists’ satisfaction with DE-PASS increased. Reduction in intensive care unit transfers was sustained after the pilot (P = .029). DE-PASS feasibility was evidenced by 100% uptake. By stratifying patients by risk level, DE-PASS reduced admission-to-evaluation times for unstable patients, potentially improving patient safety.