A & A case reports
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The relationship of care coordination activities and outcomes to resource utilization and personnel costs has been evaluated for a number of pediatric medical home practices. One of the first tools designed to evaluate the activities and outcomes for pediatric care coordination is the Care Coordination Measurement Tool (CCMT). It has become widely used as an instrument for health care providers in both primary and subspecialty care settings. ⋯ We successfully adapted and implemented the CCMT for a pediatric surgical population and measured nonface-to-face, nonbillable encounters performed by perioperative nursing staff. The care coordination activities integrated into the preoperative process include elaboration of care plans and identification and remediation of discrepancies. Capturing the activities and outcomes of care coordination for preoperative care provides a framework for quality improvement and enables documentation of the value of nonface-to-face perioperative nursing encounters that comprise care coordination.
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Ventricular assist devices (VADs) are associated with conditions that may complicate the perioperative course of pediatric heart transplants. A 7-year-old girl with dilated cardiomyopathy supported by a Toyobo-NCVC left VAD (Toyobo-National Cardiovascular Center, Osaka, Japan), a pulsatile extracorporeal device, and preoperatively anticoagulated with warfarin presented for orthotopic heart transplant. ⋯ Preoperative anticoagulation and the presence of a VAD are associated with postbypass coagulopathy and vasoplegia. We describe a case in which these conditions were successfully treated with no thrombotic complications and minimal need of vasopressors for hemodynamic stability.