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. 2017 Aug;45(3):76-80.
doi: 10.1080/21548331.2017.1309954. Epub 2017 Mar 31.

Nuts and bolts of running a pulmonary embolism response team: results from an organizational survey of the National PERT™ Consortium members

Geoffrey Barnes  1 , Jay Giri  2 , D Mark Courtney  3 , Soophia Naydenov  4 , Todd Wood  5 , Rachel Rosovsky  6 , Kenneth Rosenfield  7 , Christopher Kabrhel  8 ; National PERT™ Consortium Research Committee
Affiliations

Nuts and bolts of running a pulmonary embolism response team: results from an organizational survey of the National PERT™ Consortium members

Geoffrey Barnes et al. Hosp Pract (1995). 2017 Aug.

Abstract

Objectives: Pulmonary embolism response teams (PERT) are developing rapidly to operationalize multi-disciplinary care for acute pulmonary embolism patients. Our objective is to describe the core components of PERT necessary for newly developing programs.

Methods: An online organizational survey of active National PERT™ Consortium members was performed between April and June 2016. Analysis, including descriptive statistics and Kruskal-Wallis tests, was performed on centers self-reporting a fully operational PERT program.

Results: The survey response rate was 80%. Of the 31 institutions that responded (71% academic), 19 had fully functioning PERT programs. These programs were run by steering committees (17/19, 89%) more often than individual physicians (2/19, 11%). Most PERT programs involved 3-5 different specialties (14/19, 74%), which did not vary based on hospital size or academic affiliation. Of programs using multidisciplinary discussions, these occurred via phone or conference call (12/18, 67%), with a minority of these utilizing 'virtual meeting' software (2/12, 17%). Guidelines for appropriate activations were provided at 16/19 (84%) hospitals. Most PERT programs offered around-the-clock catheter-based or surgical care (17/19, 89%). Outpatient follow up usually occurred in personal physician clinics (15/19, 79%) or dedicated PERT clinics (9/19, 47%), which were only available at academic institutions.

Conclusions: PERT programs can be implemented, with similar structures, at small and large, community and academic medical centers. While all PERT programs incorporate team-based multi-disciplinary care into their core structure, several different models exist with varying personnel and resource utilization. Understanding how different PERT programs impact clinical care remains to be investigated.

Keywords: Pulmonary Embolism; anticoagulation; deep vein thrombosis; thrombolysis.

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