Effect of a Rapid Response Team on Hospital-wide Mortality and Code Rates Outside the ICU in a Children's Hospital.

This article reports on a study that aimed to measure the effectiveness of rapid response teams in reducing the number of preventable deaths in U.S. hospitals. A report issued by the Institute of Medicine said as many as 98,000 deaths per year in the U.S. are the result of error and armed with this statistic the rapid response team (RRT) was formed. Studies have shown that the RRT reduces mortality outside of the intensive care unit in adults but there is a lack of information on how it works on children. This cohort study found a statistically significant decline in hospital-wide mortality and code rate in pediatric services outside the intensive care ward.