The Pink Team Effect: Reducing Postoperative Emergency Transfers in Complex Care‌

In this Complex Care Journal Club podcast episode, Dr. Jason Zamkoff discusses a quality-improvement cohort study of a surgical hospitalist co-management program (Surgical Hospitalist Assisted Recovery/SHARe Team, or “Pink Team”) for children with medical complexity at Children’s Hospital Colorado. They describe how patients are selected using an internal complexity score and the institutional trust-building needed to launch the program, resulting in fewer post-operative emergency transfers to intensive care. Next steps include developing an externally validated complexity scoring tool and extending hospitalist involvement into the pre-operative period.‌ SPEAKER Jason Zamkoff, MD Professor of Pediatrics University of Colorado School of Medicine Pediatric Hospitalist Children's Hospital Colorado HOST Kilby Mann, MD Associate Professor, Director of Pediatric Rehabilitation University of North Carolina School of Medicine DATE Initial publication date: September 8, 2026. JOURNAL CLUB ARTICLE Zamkoff J, Acker SN, Martin A, Anderson L, Bennett H, Thysens J, Thomas JJ, Conant M, Kurtz M, Gupta R, Scarberry J, Burke M, Koehler R, Rolison E, Whitney G, Ziniel SI, Carney KP, Wilcox D, Lockwood JM. Surgical Hospitalist Assisted REcovery (SHARe): Preventing Post-Operative Emergency Transfers. Hosp Pediatr. 2026 Jul 21:e2025008778. doi: 10.1542/hpeds.2025-008778. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 42476571. OTHER ARTICLES REFERENCED Martin A, Acker S, Hankinson TC, Zamkoff J. Perspectives on Interdisciplinary Perioperative Care for Children with Medical Complexity. Pediatr Clin North Am. 2026 Apr;73(2):513-524. doi: 10.1016/j.pcl.2025.12.003. Epub 2026 Feb 26. PMID: 42020046.‌ TRANSCRIPT https://cdn.bfldr.com/D6LGWP8S/as/9c5mmqqq86knpmsgss5xrm8/Zamkoff_transcript_9-1-26‌ Clinicians across healthcare professions, advocates, researchers, and patients/families are all encouraged to engage and provide feedback! You can recommend an article for discussion using this form: https://forms.gle/Bdxb86Sw5qq1uFhW6. Please visit: http://www.openpediatrics.org OPENPediatrics™ is an interactive digital learning platform for healthcare clinicians sponsored by Boston Children’s Hospital and in collaboration with the World Federation of Pediatric Intensive and Critical Care Societies. It is designed to promote the exchange of knowledge between healthcare providers around the world caring for critically ill children in all resource settings. The content includes internationally recognized experts teaching the full range of topics on the care of critically ill children. All content is peer-reviewed and open-access thus at no expense to the user. For further information on how to enroll, please email: [email protected] CITATION Zamkoff J, Mann K. The Pink Team Effect: Reducing Postoperative Emergency Transfers in Complex Care. 08/2026. OPENPediatrics. Online Podcast. https://soundcloud.com/openpediatrics/the-pink-team-effect-reducing-postoperative-emergency-transfers-in-complex-care