Delirium Reduction Initiative

Delirium is a serious disturbance in mental abilities that results in confused thinking and reduced awareness of your environment. The UCSF Delirium Reduction Initiative (DRI) aims to reduce rates of delirium in patients by diagnosing patients early and treating symptoms more effectively.

This dashboard presents an overview of the performance of the DRI since it began in Fall 2016. The graphs assess the program’s impact on patient care and well-being, demonstrating that delirium duration and length of stay has decreased, while compliance rate has increased.

These are the initiatives’ key metrics as of July 2017.

Program Trends

These graphs shows the average delirium duration (the number of days a patient spent delirious) over all patients and the average length of stay over all patients from the start of the program in 2016 to the current data in 2017.

At the start of the program the average delirium duration was 4.55 days, and from the most recent data point the average delirium duration is 3.72 days, indicating a reduction of 0.83 days in average delirium duration. The average length of stay for a patient when the initiative was first implemented was 16.17 days and from the most recent data point the average length of stay is 6.51 days, indicating a reduction of 9.66 days in average length of stay.

Patient Outcomes

This graph displays the change in percentage of patients’ discharge outcomes between 2016 and 2017.

The most drastic changes are the 24.71% decrease in patients who went against medical advice between 2016 and 2017 and the 6.66% increase in patients who were released to a secondary care facility between 2016 and 2017.
In 2017, the average delirium duration and the average length of stay showed a clear decrease over time. The average delirium duration went from 18.97 days to 3.72 days, decreasing by an average of 15.25 days. The average length of stay went from 17.74 days to 6.51 days, decreasing by an average of 11.23 days.

Program Compliance

The rates of compliance for AWOL and NuDESC are calculated since the start of the program as well as in just 2017. The corresponding number of patients each week is indicated in the area graph below.

The compliance rate shows an upward trend with the lowest rate (5.09% compliant) occurring in the second week of the initiative’s implementation and the highest rate (72.55% compliant) occurring in the second to last week of the current data provided. From the start of the initiative to the most current data point, compliance rate has increased by 62.23%.