To emerge from a significant quality crisis, hospital administration recognized the need for physician leadership to drive improvements. A framework is presented for a physician-led Quality Summit to select best practice initiatives for implementation over 1 year. Results demonstrated statistically significant reductions in ventilator-associated pneumonia, decreasing from the first quarter 2009 baseline of 8.34 per 1000 ventilator days to 3.32 per 1000 ventilator days in second quarter 2010 (P = .0055). During the same time frame, catheter-associated urinary tract infections decreased from 4.35 per 1000 catheter days to 0.98 per 1000 catheter days (P = .0438), and severe sepsis/septic shock mortality declined from 33% to 13% (P = .0084). The customized World Health Organization Surgical Safety Checklist was used in 93% of surgeries within 1 month of adoption. Venous thromboembolism screening for adults became routine. The annual Quality Summit cycle engages physicians to introduce and spread quality improvement.

Thrombolytic therapy was administered to a 64-year-old man with an acute anterolateral myocardial infarction who had received cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for 24 minutes. At the time of thrombolytic therapy, the patient was alert and without clinical or radiographic evidence of injury. The patient developed a retroperitoneal hematoma related to femoral line placement, as well as subcutaneous bruising of the anterior chest wall; both were self-limited. No long-term morbidity developed, and the myocardial infarction was aborted. The use of thrombolytic therapy for patients with acute myocardial infarction who have received CPR is reviewed. In the absence of clinical or radiographic evidence of trauma from CPR, patients with acute myocardial infarction should not be excluded from receiving thrombolytic therapy solely because of having had CPR or the duration of CPR. Acad. Emerg. Med. 1994; 1:61-66.