Rapid Response Systems as a Patient Safety Measure

Promoting patient safety: the rapid medical response team.

CONTEXT Adverse events are estimated to affect up to 17% of hospitalized patients and to cause up to 98,000 patient deaths per year in the United States. Unexpected codes in hospitalized patients are one of the most significant adverse events, carrying a risk of death that is reported to range from 50% to 80%. OBJECTIVE The Rapid Medical Response Team (RMRT) was an initiative designed to redu...

The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety: Rapid Response Systems: The Stories

Several studies have shown that patients frequently display physical evidence of deterioration as much as 8–12 hours before a cardiac arrest or critical event requiring some form of intensive intervention or rescue. Early recognition of these signs, followed by prompt treatment, may reduce death rates in hospitalized patients. However, deterioration is frequently difficult to assess because of ...

Where is Patient Safety Research and Practice Heading? A Response to Recent Commentaries

Rapid response systems: you won't know there is a problem until you measure it

The rapid response system concept is one of the first patient-centered and organizational-wide systems aimed at preventing deaths and serious adverse events. It has been strongly argued that we need a benchmark that reflects the care of a deteriorating patient across the organization using a 'score to door time'; that is, the time from the first vital sign abnormality to admission to the ICU. T...

Rapid response systems

Rapid response systems (RRSs) are one of the first organisation-wide, patient-focused systems to be developed to prevent potentially avoidable deaths and serious adverse events such as cardiac arrests. RRSs identify seriously ill and at-risk patients and those whose condition is deteriorating, using abnormal vital signs and observations that trigger an urgent response by staff who are able to d...