To the Editor:
The article by Kallam and colleagues1 about the potential financial advantages of protocol-driven bronchodilator therapy provides an important perspective. However, there are no data about the validation of the scoring tool or the evidence supporting the correlation of the bronchodilator orders with the assessment score. While we await their report on their before-and-after project examining clinical outcomes, can they provide this missing information?
Footnotes
The author has disclosed no conflicts of interest.
- Copyright © 2013 by Daedalus Enterprises
References
- 1.↵
The authors respond to: Physician-Ordered Aerosol Therapy Versus Respiratory Therapist-Driven Aerosol Protocol: Effect on Resource Utilization
We appreciate Ms Carroll's question. The respiratory-therapist-driven bronchodilator protocol we described1 was based on one previously published.2 Importantly, we would like to clarify that the aim of our study was not the validation of a tool. We just described a phase of a quality improvement project, which eventually showed that systematization and homogeneity of a process (bronchodilator administration) can, hypothetically, save costs, when compared with a heterogeneous physician-driven strategy. We are currently in the process of analyzing the data from before and after implementation of this protocol. Our results should be available soon.
Footnotes
The authors have disclosed no conflicts of interest.
