Tag Archive for: quality

Pavan Zaveri

Children’s National Receives Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Grant

Pavan Zaveri

“Providing educational opportunities to teach about safety, communication and leadership can be leveraged into quality & safety and process improvement,” said Pavan P. Zaveri, M.D., MEd, CHSE, medical director of the Simulation Program at Children’s National.

Recent medical innovations at Children’s National Health System have made it possible for the doctors and care teams to treat some of our most vulnerable patients. To support that technological innovation, Children’s National has received a grant provided by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) entitled, “Pursuing Excellence through Innovation”. This grant has utilized simulation and several other initiatives to achieve its aims toward quality, safety, interprofessionalism and more.

“A primary goal of the ACGME Pursing Excellence grant is to improve the clinical learning environment, specifically for the interprofessional education in clinical areas,” said Heather Walsh, MSN, RN, PCNS-BC CHSE CPN, Simulation Program manager at Children’s National.

The $300,000 grant supports 10 to 12 initiatives at Children’s National and is currently in its 3rd year. One of the major initiatives has been to incorporate simulation activities into more aspects of training and patient care. This growth has required the Simulation Program to expand its personnel, activities and abilities in multiple ways. With a team consisting of three educators, a program manager, two simulation technicians, a program coordinator and medical and nursing directors, their efforts directly support the simulation program as a whole.

“Providing educational opportunities to teach about safety, communication and leadership can be leveraged into quality & safety and process improvement,” said Pavan P. Zaveri, M.D., MEd, CHSE, medical director of the Simulation Program at Children’s National. “However, the focus of the work that we’re performing is focused on interprofessional care that is delivered at the bedside,” he added.

Through the Simulation Program, educators work to recreate situations by using manikins and supplies to replicate patient scenarios and function in a realistic situation. The cost of the manikins range from $5,000 to $50,000 and they perform a whole spectrum of presenting the pediatric patient including talking and providing vitals. This simulation provides doctors and nurses with the opportunity to perfect the care that they aim to deliver to patients at Children’s National.

In 2018, the Simulation Program was proud that 53% of simulations supported by the Children’s National team were interprofessional and 43% were conducted in clinical areas. Between 2016 and 2017, the Simulation Program led an initiative entitled “Code Response Training”, which focused on the use of safety communication techniques in critical situations.

“This was the largest simulation-based initiative in our organization, reaching 1,400 clinicians,” Walsh stated.

The following year, Children’s National implemented “Adaptive Response Training” that focused on teaching clinicians about the importance of safety event reporting, apparent cause analysis and root cause analysis. This initiative led 1,800 clinicians through a simulated apparent cause analysis and team simulation.

Children’s National ranked No. 6 overall and No. 1 for newborn care by U.S. News

Children’s National in Washington, D.C., is the nation’s No. 6 children’s hospital and, for the third year in a row, its neonatology program is No.1 among all children’s hospitals providing newborn intensive care, according to the U.S. News Best Children’s Hospitals annual rankings for 2019-20.

This is also the third year in a row that Children’s National has been in the top 10 of these national rankings. It is the ninth straight year it has ranked in all 10 specialty services, with five specialty service areas ranked among the top 10.

“I’m proud that our rankings continue to cement our standing as among the best children’s hospitals in the nation,” says Kurt Newman, M.D., President and CEO for Children’s National. “In addition to these service lines, today’s recognition honors countless specialists and support staff who provide unparalleled, multidisciplinary patient care. Quality care is a function of every team member performing their role well, so I credit every member of the Children’s National team for this continued high performance.”

The annual rankings recognize the nation’s top 50 pediatric facilities based on a scoring system developed by U.S. News. The top 10 scorers are awarded a distinction called the Honor Roll.

“The top 10 pediatric centers on this year’s Best Children’s Hospitals Honor Roll deliver outstanding care across a range of specialties and deserve to be nationally recognized,” says Ben Harder, chief of health analysis at U.S. News. “According to our analysis, these Honor Roll hospitals provide state-of-the-art medical expertise to children with rare or complex conditions. Their rankings reflect U.S. News’ assessment of their commitment to providing high-quality, compassionate care to young patients and their families day in and day out.”

The bulk of the score for each specialty is based on quality and outcomes data. The process also includes a survey of relevant specialists across the country, who are asked to list hospitals they believe provide the best care for patients with challenging conditions.

Below are links to the five specialty services that U.S. News ranked in the top 10 nationally:

The other five specialties ranked among the top 50 were cardiology and heart surgery, diabetes and endocrinology, gastroenterology and gastro-intestinal surgery, orthopedics, and urology.

Top Children’s Hospital logo

The Leapfrog Group names Children’s National Health System a 2018 “Top Children’s Hospital”

Top Children’s Hospital logo

On December 4, 2018, Children’s National Health System was named a 2018 “Top Children’s Hospital” by The Leapfrog Group, an independent watchdog organization. The highest performing hospitals on the Leapfrog Hospital Survey are recognized annually for this prestigious award. Children’s National is proud to have been recognized 10 times as “Top Children’s Hospital.” Top hospitals are given the designation for having distinct achievements in patient safety and quality, including lower infection rates, decreased length of stay, fewer readmissions and higher survival rates for high-risk procedures.

“We’re particularly proud of this acknowledgment as it recognizes our unwavering commitment to high-quality patient care,” said Kurt Newman, M.D., president and CEO of Children’s National. “It highlights our exceptional clinicians and support teams who work to constantly improve the safety of the care we provide.”

The Top Children’s Hospitals are selected based on The Leapfrog Group’s annual survey of nearly 1,900 hospitals across the country which measures hospitals’ performance in many areas of hospital care, including reduced medication rates and capacity to prevent medication errors.

“Being acknowledged as a Top Children’s Hospital is an incredible feat achieved by less than six percent of eligible hospitals nationwide,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group. “With this honor, Children’s National has established its commitment to safer and higher quality care. Providing this level of care to patients in Washington, D.C. requires motivation and drive from every team member. I congratulate the board, staff and clinicians, whose efforts made this honor possible.”

Brian Stone with baby

Collaborative approach to NICU care leads to improved quality and safety across hospitals

Brian Stone with baby

Parents with sick or premature newborns want and need the best care possible, making quality and safety in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) a top priority. Over the past decade, Children’s National Health System has provided top quality NICU care to the Washington, D.C. community and surrounding areas. As part of this commitment, the institution developed an extensive network of partnerships in the Mid-Atlantic region where Children’s National neonatologists and advanced practice providers collaborate with other hospitals in the region to share best practices in the NICU.

Together, Children’s National and partner hospitals aim to improve NICU care for patients and families. To carry out this commitment, Children’s National neonatologists fully integrate themselves into local community hospitals to provide services such as neonatal care, delivery room attendance, consultations to obstetricians and local pediatricians, and serve as educators to the hospital team.

Integrating pediatric specialists into community hospitals that treat both adults and children helps strengthen the infrastructure and refine practices to specifically understand pediatric biology and development to enhance existing care. Using the Dyad leadership model, the team forms interdisciplinary care committees, led by a physician and nursing champion, to empower everyone who interacts with the NICU and has a stake in a child’s care. All policies and procedures are vetted by these committees to ensure high-quality, cohesive care for the patient.

Through this collaboration, Children’s National neonatologists oversee newborn care for more than 10,000 births per year. Outcomes include:

  • Partner NICUs consistently perform in the top quartile for key performance benchmarking measures in national networks.
  • Partner NICUs have lower than predicted rates of morbidity, infection, lung disease and necrotizing enterocolitis which are major determinants in overall neonatal outcome.

Based on this success, Children’s National created the Division of Pediatric Outreach in 2017, led by Brian Stone, M.D., M.B.A. This division focuses on ensuring that neonatal and pediatric patients have access to and can receive expert care from Children’s National specialists in their local community birth hospital. Additionally, the division works closely with local obstetricians and maternal-fetal-medicine specialists to develop birth and post-natal plans for high-risk pregnancies to ensure that newborns have the best possible start.

“Over the years, we have been able to leverage our internal expertise as reflected in our current number one ranking in U.S. News & World Report and extend the same high level of care to patients born within our extended network to improve population health as a whole within the region,” said Dr. Stone.

Shireen Atabaki

Innovative care using health IT lands Children’s National a 2017 HIMSS Enterprise Davies Award

Shireen Atabaki

A new diagnostic tool led by Shireen Atabaki, M.D., M.P.H., helps prescribers determine if CT scans are necessary for children with head injuries through a checklist protocol.

Opportunities to improve the lives of children are increasingly found at the intersection of health and technology, a sweet spot for enhancing care in today’s connected world. A team of experts at Children’s National Health System launched several initiatives using health information technology to improve care delivery, earning the institution the prestigious 2017 HIMSS Enterprise Davies Award. Recognizing outstanding achievements of organizations that have utilized health IT to significantly improve patient outcomes while also achieving a return on investment, Children’s National received the award based on three case studies in particular:

  • Decreasing use of CAT scans by 44 percent – A new diagnostic tool led by Shireen Atabaki, M.D., M.P.H., emergency medicine specialist, incorporated into the electronic health record helps prescribers determine if CT scans are necessary for children with head injuries through a checklist protocol. The new tool reduced the rate of CT scan utilization by 44 percent – decreasing unnecessary radiation exposure for children and resulting in first-year cost savings of more than $875,000.
  • Innovative unit-based quality boards – These electronic boards provide health care teams and families with real-time quality and safety information. By having patient information readily available in one location, the boards improved medication reconciliation by 13 percent, decreased the time to patient consent by 49 percent, and reduced duration of urinary catheters by 11 percent.
  • Improved clinician documentation – To improve outcomes and reduce costs,

Children’s National transitioned from dictation/transcription-driven notes to electronic/voice recognition notes in ambulatory specialty clinics. This allowed for the immediate availability of notes to all care providers and a significant reduction in transcription costs.

These initiatives demonstrate the life-changing quality and safety efforts under way at Children’s National that put patient safety first. Brian Jacobs, M.D., vice president, chief medical information officer and chief information officer, accepted the award on behalf of Children’s National at the HIMSS Awards gala at the Wynn in Las Vegas in March.

Zeroing in on Zero Harm

Zeroing in on zero harm: Innovative quality and safety initiatives from Children’s National experts

Zeroing in on Zero Harm

Leaders at Children’s National Health System recently showcased innovative quality and safety initiatives on a national stage at the Children’s Hospital Association’s 2018 Quality and Safety in Children’s Health Conference.

Leaders at Children’s National Health System recently showcased innovative quality and safety initiatives on a national stage at the Children’s Hospital Association’s 2018 Quality and Safety in Children’s Health Conference. While collaborating with other medical professionals in the field, the team made an impact by sharing key projects implemented at Children’s National to enhance patient care and reduce harm, including:

    • Safety in Numbers: Driving 10,000 Good Catches – Presented by Rahul Shah, M.D., vice president, chief quality and safety officer, and Rebecca Cady, Esq, BSN, vice president, chief risk officer: Recognizing barriers to reporting safety events, Children’s National embarked upon a three-year corporate goal to double the number of safety event reports, ultimately leading to reduction of preventable harm. By promoting staff accountability and using incentives to drive reporting, incident reports more than doubled in a three-year time frame.
    • Moving from Disjointed Spreadsheets to a Real-Time Data Management System – Presented by Evan Hochberg, R.N., patient safety consultant, and Neil Bhattarai, C.S.T., process improvement consultant: Tracking hospital-acquired conditions (HACs) requires robust data capabilities, which is why Children’s National sought to improve its HAC data system with increased efficiencies and reduced delays in how staff presented data to the hospital. The team recognized opportunities to improve the management of HAC data, leading to the finding that increased real-time awareness of harm events while utilizing existing infrastructure can accelerate harm reduction.
    • Improving the Surgical Experience for Children with Autism – Presented by Terry Spearman, C.C.L.S., manager of child life services: Staff at Children’s National found that many patients with autism entering the operating room needed special support to make it through pre-op, complicating their path toward surgery and causing frustration for patients, families and the care team. The team solved this challenge by creating a system to identify patients before they arrived for surgery, which allowed staff to create a safe passage plan for each patient and to achieve better care coordination with all care team members. Titled “Help Me Keep Calm,” the hospital’s program provides a more peaceful and individualized experience for both the patient and his or her family.
    • IMPACT Session: Enhancing Psychological Safety to Improve the Safety Climate – Presented by Rahul Shah, M.D., vice president, chief quality and safety officer; Evan Hochberg, R.N., patient safety consultant; and Kathryn Jacobsen, R.N., director of patient safety: Psychological safety around event reporting is a crucial element of safety culture and the ability to voice concerns without reprisal leads to the ideal safe environment.
Scoliosis X-ray image

Improved procedures, reduced harm: Moving the needle on spinal fusion

Scoliosis X-ray image

In many cases of pediatric scoliosis, a surgical posterior spinal fusion – a life-changing yet complicated process – is needed to straighten the spine.

As part of its ongoing transition to value-based care, Children’s National is constantly reevaluating systems and processes across specialties and proactively seeking ways to deliver the highest quality care. This includes treatments for everything from the rarest of diseases to more frequent conditions, such as pediatric scoliosis.

In many cases of pediatric scoliosis, a surgical posterior spinal fusion – a life-changing yet complicated process – is needed to straighten the spine. The procedure involves permanently fusing bones over the curved part of the spine and requires expert coordination among physicians, nurses and therapists. To improve the procedure and make it as safe and efficient as possible, experts at Children’s National developed a first-of-its-kind pediatric spinal fusion surgical home, an innovative, family-centered approach that is making a real impact.

Prior to this initiative, patients who underwent posterior spinal fusion to treat scoliosis spent multiple days across multiple units in the hospital. Thanks to a comprehensive care pathway with input from all care providers treating these patients, overall recovery time has been reduced as well as days in the hospital. This in turn decreased the costs to both the families and Children’s National.

In the first six months of implementation, changes included decreasing the average length of stay from approximately five days to three and a half days, decreased blood transfusion rate and less use of opioid pain medications. Each of these pieces directly contributes to the safety of a child and decreased costs across the board. Ultimately, implementing cutting-edge practices like these brings the organization closer to zero harm and helps move the needle on patient care across the industry.

Electronic medical record on tablet

Combating ENT wrong patient errors

Electronic medical record on tablet

A recent article published in ENTtoday highlights specific ways ENT physicians can improve quality and care for patients to work towards eliminating wrong patient errors and achieving a zero-harm environment.

In the article, Rahul Shah, M.D., Vice President and Chief Quality & Safety Officer at Children’s National Health System, points out that ENTs are especially vulnerable to wrong patient errors (WPEs) due to the wide variety of settings in which they see patients. He asserts that with this knowledge in mind, ENTS can find ways to “block and tackle” to prevent WPEs from occurring. Key to success is the development of a supportive culture of reporting where all staff are encouraged and empowered to speak up.

“With any size of practice, you need to talk about safety and quality. If doesn’t have to be formal, and don’t overthink it. Something as easy as a safety huddle a couple of times a week goes a long way toward shaping the culture.”

Read the full article here.

Rahul Shah

A big transformation starting with small changes from within

Rahul Shah

“It was novel and exciting to see managers, chiefs, and even front-line staff identify potential ‘projects’ that could potentially fall under this work,” said . Rahul Shah, M.D., Vice President and Chief Quality & Safety Officer. “The change, as the executive leadership hoped, was organic and recognized a true cultural shift.”

Like many health care systems, Children’s National realizes that in order to provide top care to patients, the hospital and health system have to constantly evolve. In 2013, across the country, the importance of a strong safety and quality program were growing and the organization’s executive leadership made it a key priority to deliver the best care and follow best practices to ensure that we were driving value in healthcare. Children’s National embarked on a long-term journey, known as Transformation 2018, that would ultimately prove successful in improving quality of care while reducing costs across the hospital system.

When starting this initiative, the leaders at Children’s realized that in order to successfully transition from volume-based to value-based care, the change had to occur organically – in other words, led by our own internal teams. Continuously striving to be on the forefront of quality and safety innovation, Children’s National has always valued a culture that empowers staff at all levels to be part of transformations, and this initiative was no different. Rahul Shah, M.D., Vice President and Chief Quality & Safety Officer, and Linda Talley, R.N., Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer, would lead the effort.

Rather than setting their sights on first targeting populations of patients, as is common practice, the team aimed to make an impact at a more micro level by focusing on particular diseases or diagnoses. This strategy allowed the initiative to start on a small scale and involve staff in numerous divisions across the health system, which would eventually pave the way for bolder and broader population health initiatives.

By integrating changes through individual initiatives, Children’s National achieved a combination of quality and cost savings in a number of disease areas, including autism, testicular torsion, idiopathic posterior spinal fusion and sickle cell disease vaso-occlusive crisis.

As the benefits of this effort were realized, leaders throughout the hospital approached the transformation team to see how they too could be a part of the project to transition their divisions.

“It was novel and exciting to see managers, chiefs, and even front-line staff identify potential ‘projects’ that could potentially fall under this work,” said Dr. Shah. “The change, as the executive leadership hoped, was organic and recognized a true cultural shift.”

Rahul Shah

Speaking up for safety: Virginia Hospital and HealthCare Association spotlights culture of reporting at Children’s National Health System

Rahul Shah

Rahul Shah, M.D., Vice President and Chief Quality and Safety Officer at Children’s National recently sat down with VHHA’s REVIEW magazine to share best practices and success strategies.

For Children’s National Health System, fostering a culture of safety meant empowering everyone to play a role, from front line staff to providers to the C-suite. Recently, pediatric quality and safety experts at Children’s National sat down with Virginia Hospital & Health Association (VHHA)’s REVIEW magazine to share best practices, success strategies and leadership from Children’s National in this arena. Rahul Shah, M.D., MBA, Children’s National vice president and chief quality and safety officer, and Lisbeth Fahey, MSN, RN, executive director for quality, safety, accreditation, regulatory and emergency preparedness, discussed how establishing a non-punitive culture of reporting where anyone can raise a concern led to improved safety outcomes.

“Our approach has been to make it fun, make it exciting and to reward people,” said Shah, noting the inverse correlation between reporting frequency and safety results.

Doctor-putting-mask-on

Promoting a culture of safety with 10,000 good catches

Doctor-putting-mask-on

In today’s fast-paced health care environment, it has become increasingly important to create a culture of safety where improvement opportunities are recognized and welcomed. With medical errors cited as the one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the United States, health care organizations are working to rapidly identify and respond to errors before long-term issues develop.

Improving event reporting is a critical step. To create an effective culture of safety, employees from throughout a hospital or health system must be empowered. They must be educated and have the ability to easily raise awareness of potential problems and risks and they must be able to proactively resolve problems. With this mindset, Children’s National Health System set out to double the number of voluntary safety event reports submitted over a three-year period; the intent was to increase reliability and promote safety culture by hardwiring employee event reporting. With the goal of growing from 4,668 reports in fiscal year 2014 to 9,336 in 2017, the initiative became known as 10,000 Good Catches. And, the positive framing of the endeavor added to a sense of ownership and reporting among staff members.

Following a Donabedian quality improvement framework of structure, process and outcomes, Children’s National formed a multidisciplinary team and identified three key areas for improvement:

  1. Technology: Make reporting user-friendly, fast and easy
  2. Safe to Report: Create a non-punitive environment in which staff feel secure reporting safety events
  3. Makes a Difference: Develop a culture and system to provide feedback and advance meaningful improvements stemming from safety event reporting

Over the next three years, the team, via subcommittees, routinely solicited feedback from front-line users and met as a larger group monthly to propose interventions, review quantitative data and prioritize next steps. In tandem, employees were educated through internal communications on how, what and when to report. The primary outcome measure was the number of safety event reports submitted through the electronic reporting platform. Event report submission time, number of departments submitting events and percent of safety event reports submitted anonymously were also tracked.

These efforts paid off, as Children’s National more than doubled the number of voluntary safety event reports filed over the three-year period from 4,668 in fiscal year 2014 to 10,971 in 2017, with steady annual improvements. Other metrics included decreased event reporting time and anonymous reports. Interestingly, there was a marked increase in the number of departments submitting reports.

This successful initiative not only resulted in increased safety reporting and engagement, but was an important step toward improving organizational reliability and building a culture of safety first. Future steps will focus on how to sustain improvement, how to more efficiently leverage reporting data and how to apply the data to prevent future safety events.