Multidisciplinary tracheostomy teams: Transforming care and preventing harm amid the pandemic

Session Description: A landmark study found that in intensive care units (ICUs), tracheostomy incidents accounted for up to half of all airway-related deaths and hypoxic brain damage. Multidisciplinary adult and pediatric tracheostomy teams have achieved dramatic reductions in adverse events and improved patient outcomes, but dissemination of highly reliable practices has lagged. This panel addresses this gap by providing a strategy for rapid performance improvement with specific building blocks for enhancing care. Five key drivers-multidisciplinary ward rounds, standardized protocols, interdisciplinary education and staff allocation, patient and family involvement, and using data to drive improvement-can result in transformative change. We present data from 4 institutions, providing turnkey solutions and lessons learned from the creation of teams. We cover from the index procedure to decannulation and discharge, discussing obstacles encountered and how they are overcome. After presenting institution-level experience, we report on the largest implementation of these principles to date, drawing on prospectively captured patient-level global data from nearly 10,000 cases. We take a deep dive into a 3-year-long, 20-hospitalwide multipronged implementation that involved mixedmethods analysis, data tracking, and benchmarking to demonstrate powerful, statistically significant effects of reducing hospital and ICU length of stay, ventilator duration, time to cuff deflation, time to first vocalization, time to first oral intake, prevalence of anxiety and depression, and cost savings, projected at >$15,000 per patient. While heterogeneity is a defining feature of tracheostomy, we demonstrate how across age and geographies, multidisciplinary teams are a game changer in tracheostomy care. In addition, the imperatives of the COVID-19 pandemic have necessitated additional measures in relation to aerosol-generating procedures. We curate salient data and present practical evidence-based recommendations. Outcome Objectives: (1) Present building blocks and discuss obstacles to creating a multidisciplinary tracheostomy care team. (2) Leverage data-science and ongoing efforts to improve tracheostomy outcomes. (3) Compare the approaches of different hospital systems in the creation of tracheostomy care teams in the context of COVID-19.