The Children's Hospital Associated awarded four hospitals across the U.S. with the Pediatric Quality Award, which recognizes hospitals for improving health outcomes. Yale New Haven (Conn.) Children's Hospital was named the overall winner.
Together, the four hospitals saved $11 million in healthcare costs. In honoring leading children's hospitals, the Pediatric Quality Award aims to spread successful improvement initiatives that other hospitals can replicate to improve care.
Every two years, CHA member hospitals submit improvement projects that have positively affected patient safety, financial performance and hospital culture. A panel of peers and international healthcare experts chooses the winners.
For this award, the judges selected 13 semifinalists and the overall and category winners from 110 entries submitted by 60 hospitals in four categories. CHA announced the winners March 6 during the 2018 Quality & Safety Conference.
Here are the four recipients of the 2017 Pediatric Quality Award.
1. Yale New Haven Children's Hospital. The 213-bed hospital implemented a more reliable system for identifying and reporting safety events and reduced their serious safety events rate to zero over a four-year period. The initiative resulted in $3 million worth of savings.
2. The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. After launching a quality improvement framework to improve drug utilization for storing and dispensing isoproterenol, a life-saving medication used in cardiac and pulmonary hypertension patients, the 546-bed hospital saved $1.2 million in drug spending and $1.4 million in annual waste costs from 2016-17.
3. Nationwide Children's Hospital (Columbus, Ohio). Nationwide Children's aimed to decrease asthma-related emergency department visits among Primary Care Network patients by administering asthma control tests during well and sick visits. The hospital then provided action plans to patients during regular asthma visits and saw a 24 percent decrease in ED visits over six years, saving $5.2 million in asthma ED costs.
4. Ochsner Hospital for Children (New Orleans). The children's hospital reduced unplanned extubations, which can lead to infection and longer hospital stays, in its pediatric intensive care unit by identifying breakdowns in securing tubes, adjusting staff training and starting new protocols. As a result, the hospital saw 43 fewer ventilator days and $240,000 in savings during year one.
To view the winning entry from Nashville, Tenn.-based Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt, click here.