Association Between Survival and Time of Day for Rapid Response Team Calls in a National Registry.

Objectives: Decreased staffing at nighttime is associated with worse outcomes in hospitalized patients. Rapid response teams were developed to decrease preventable harm by providing additional critical care resources to patients with clinical deterioration. We sought to determine whether rapid response team call frequency suffers from decreased utilization at night and how this is associated with patient outcomes. Design: Retrospective analysis of a prospectively collected registry database. Setting: National registry database of inpatient rapid response team calls. Patients: Index rapid response team calls occurring on the general wards in the American Heart Association Get With The Guidelines-Medical Emergency Team database between 2005 and 2015 were analyzed. Interventions: None. Measurements and Main Results: The primary outcome was inhospital mortality. Patient and event characteristics between the hours with the highest and lowest mortality were compared, and multivariable models adjusting for patient characteristics were fit. A total of 282,710 rapid response team calls from 274 hospitals were included. The lowest frequency of calls occurred in the consecutive 1 AM to 6:59 AM period, with 266 of 274 (97%) hospitals having lower than expected call volumes during those hours. Mortality was highest during the 7 AM hour and lowest during the noon hour (18.8% vs 13.8%; adjusted odds ratio, 1.41 [1.31-1.52]; p

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