Tag Archive for: shah

child in hospital bed

Children’s National team develops trigger program for improved safety

child in hospital bed

Children’s National Hospital developed a unique pediatric triggers program that offers customized, near real-time reports of potential safety events.

Errors and adverse events continue to be a source of patient harm despite many hospitals creating safety programs. However, there are opportunities to improve patient safety using novel tools. For example, trigger programs.

A new study, published in Pediatrics, shows how a team at Children’s National Hospital developed a unique pediatric triggers program that offers customized, near real-time reports of potential safety events.

The big picture

The team defined a measure to quantify clinical utility of triggers, termed “trigger signal,” as the percentage of cases that represent true adverse or near-miss events (numerator) per total triggers activated (denominator). A Key Driver Diagram focused on unifying the program structure, increasing data analytics, promoting organizational awareness and supporting multidisciplinary end user engagement.

What we did

Using the Model for Improvement, the team of experts aimed to double overall trigger signal from 8% to 16% and sustain for 12 months.

“The Triggers Program used data analytics with quality and process improvement tools to employ novel strategies to improve trigger signal,” said Parissa Safari, M.H.A., Triggers Program project lead at Children’s National Hospital and one of the study’s authors. “This included shifting to multiple trigger committees, integrating electronic health record data with end user feedback and promoting organizational awareness.”

What we learned

Relying on the model, the team found that:

  • Trigger signal increased from 8% to 41% and sustained during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • A balancing measure of time to implement a new trigger decreased.
  • Key interventions to increase trigger signals were changing the program structure, increasing stakeholder engagement and development of self-service reports for end users.

The triggers program developed by the team at Children’s National highlights successful evolution of an iterative, customized approach to increase clinical utility which hospitals can implement to impact real-time patient care.

Authors on the study from Children’s National include: Richelle M. Reinhart, M.D.; Ranjodh Badh, B.S.; Solomon Abera, Pharm.D., M.Sc.; Anit Saha, M.S.H.A., M.B.A.; Jessica Herstek, M.D.; Rahul K. Shah, M.D., M.B.A.; Kavita Parikh, M.D., M.S.H.S.

sick boy in bed

Clinical features of COVID-19 versus influenza

sick boy in bed

In a cohort retrospective study comparing clinical features of COVID-19 and seasonal flu, researchers found surprisingly little difference in the rates of hospitalization, admission to the intensive care unit and mechanical ventilator use between the two groups.

As the fall approaches, pediatric hospitals will start seeing children with seasonal influenza A and B. At the same time, COVID-19 will be co-circulating in communities with the flu and other respiratory viruses, making it more difficult to identify and prevent the novel coronavirus.

With little published data directly comparing the clinical features of children with COVID-19 to those with seasonal flu, researchers at Children’s National Hospital decided to conduct a retrospective cohort study of patients in the two groups. Their findings — published September 8 in JAMA Network Open — surprised them.

The study — detailed in the article “Comparison of Clinical Features of US Children With COVID-19 vs Seasonal Influenza A and B” — showed no statistically significant differences in the rates of hospitalization, admission to the intensive care unit and mechanical ventilator use between the two groups.

The other unexpected finding was that more patients with COVID-19 than those with seasonal influenza reported fever, cough, diarrhea or vomiting, headache, body ache or chest pain at the time of diagnosis, says Xiaoyan Song, Ph.D., M.Sc., M.B., the study’s principal investigator.

“I didn’t see this coming when I was thinking about doing the study,” says Dr. Song, director of Infection Control and Epidemiology at Children’s National since 2007 and a professor of pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. “It took several rounds of thinking and combing through the data to convince myself that this was the conclusion.”

Given that much remains unknown about COVID-19, the researchers’ discovery that children with the disease present with more symptoms at the time of diagnosis is a valuable one.

“It’s a good cue from a prevention and planning perspective,” says Dr. Song. “We always emphasize early recognition and early isolation with COVID. Having a clinical picture in mind will assist clinicians as they diagnose patients with symptoms of the coronavirus.”

The study included 315 children who were diagnosed with a laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 between March 25, 2020, and May 15, 2020, and 1,402 children who were diagnosed with a laboratory-confirmed seasonal influenza between Oct. 1, 2019, and June 6, 2020, at Children’s National. Asymptomatic patients who tested positive for COVID-19 during pre-admission or pre-procedural screening were excluded from the study.

Of the 315 patients who tested positive for COVID-19, 52% were male, with a median age of 8.4 years. Of these patients, 54 (17.1 %) were hospitalized, including 18 (5.7%) who were admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) and 10 (3.2%) who received mechanical ventilator treatment.

Among the 1,402 patients who tested positive for influenza A or B, 52% were male, with a median age of 3.9 years, and 291 (21.2%) were hospitalized, including 143 for influenza A and 148 for influenza B. Ninety-eight patients (7.0%) were admitted to the ICU, and 27 (1.9%) received mechanical ventilator support.

The study showed a slight difference in the age of children hospitalized with COVID-19 compared to those hospitalized with seasonal influenza. Patients hospitalized with COVID-19 had a median age of 9.7 years vs. those hospitalized with seasonal influenza who had a median age of 4.2 years.

In both groups, fever was the most often reported symptom at the time of diagnosis followed by cough. A greater proportion of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 than those hospitalized with seasonal influenza reported fever (76% vs. 55%), cough (48% vs. 31%), diarrhea or vomiting (26% vs. 12%), headache (11% vs. 3%), body ache/myalgia (22% vs. 7%), and chest pain (11% vs. 3%).

More patients hospitalized with COVID-19 than those with seasonal influenza reported sore throat or congestion (22% vs. 20%) and shortness of breath (30% vs. 20%), but the differences were not statistically significant.

During the study period, the researchers noticed an abrupt decline of influenza cases at Children’s National after local schools closed in mid-March and stay-at-home orders were implemented about two weeks later to combat the community spread of COVID-19. Dr. Song says the impact of school closures on the spread of COVID-19 among children is the next area of study for her research team.

“We want to assess the quantitative impact of school closures so we can determine at what point the cost of closing schools and staying at home outweighs the benefit of reducing transmission of COVID-19 and burdens on the health care system,” she says.

Dr. Song urges members of the community “first and foremost to stay calm and be strong. We’re learning new and valuable things about this virus each day, which in turn improves care. The collision of the flu and COVID-19 this fall could mean an increase in pediatric hospitalizations. That’s why it’s important to get your flu shot, because it can help take at least one respiratory virus out of circulation.”

Other researchers who contributed to this study include Meghan Delaney, D.O.; Rahul K. Shah, M.D.; Joseph M. Campos, Ph.D.; David L. Wessel, M.D.; and Roberta L. DeBiasi, M.D.

Children's National Hospital

Safety at every level: a cultural transformation

Children's National Hospital

In early December, Children’s National Quality & Safety leadership team led participants through the hospital’s high-reliability journey and actionable tools at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement National Forum in Orlando, Fla.

In early December 2019, leadership from Children’s National Hospital quality and safety team attended and presented at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement National Forum in Orlando, Fla. The presentation, titled Safety at Every Level: A Cultural Transformation, provided attendees with an overview of Children’s National Hospital’s high reliability journey and actionable tools they could use to improve quality and safety.

Rahul Shah, M.D., MBA., vice president and chief quality and safety officer, Lisbeth Fahey, MSN, RN., executive director of quality and safety, Kavita Parikh, M.D., MSHS, pediatric hospitalist, and Kathryn Merkeley, MHSA, RN, director of patient safety, led the participants through each step of our journey, highlighting where the organization started, key steps in the process and lessons learned along the way.

The presentation demonstrated the integration of safety tools such as error prevention training, safety briefings, safety event reporting, cause analysis, safety culture measurement and transparency with high reliability principles to produce tangible gains in safety, quality and organizational culture. Dr. Shah emphasized the overarching theme of continuous learning and iterative change that is needed to be successful with this type of work.

“We’re always learning and looking to make things better by benchmarking our work against other pediatric organizations,” Dr. Shah said. “It’s important to ensure that we use the best practices to make sure we have the latest, best and most-evidence based practices to remain a top performing pediatric hospital.”

In a pediatric setting, safety is the keystone for performance excellence. As organizations work toward becoming high-reliability organizations they become more sensitive to operations, committed to resilience and are more reluctant to simplify their observations. Through implementing these tools and continually evaluating and learning, Children’s National was able to institute the evolution of a new safety culture by being more systematic, proactive and generative.

“Our goal was to provide the audience with tools they could use on their own journey to high-reliability,” said Merkeley. “We not only wanted to share our successes in creating positive culture change, but also the many lessons we’ve learned along the way and the desire to always be learning and improving.”

asthma inhailer

Picture imperfect: Eliminating asthma triggers through smartphones

asthma inhailer

Children’s National is among five awardees sharing $10 million in funding under Fannie Mae’s Sustainable Communities Innovation Challenge: Healthy Affordable Housing, a national competition to identify innovative ideas to help children and families enjoy safer homes. Fannie Mae made the funding announcement on May 21, 2019.

Children’s funding will underwrite a pilot program to use smartphones to enable virtual home visits, leveraging the skills of Children’s pediatric asthma specialists, health educators and community housing remediation specialists who will video conference with families in the home to identify potential housing asthma triggers.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 12 children and adolescents (6 million) have asthma, and one in six children with asthma visit the emergency department each year. In Washington, D.C., substandard housing can play an outsized role in triggering asthma exacerbations. Asthma-related hospital visits are 12 times higher in the city’s poorest neighborhoods, compared with affluent ZIP codes.

Working with community partners, Children’s faculty aim to eliminate asthma triggers right at the source, improving children’s well-being and creating healthier homes.

Right now during in-home visits, staff look for holes under kitchen sinks and gaps in the walls or flooring where pests and vermin might enter as well as leaks where mold and mildew can bloom. These systematic visits yield detailed notes to best direct resources to remediate those housing woes. The in-person visits however, are labor intensive and require delicate diplomacy to first open doors then to point out potential asthma triggers without coming off as judgmental.

“The beauty of our innovation is that residents can show us these same problematic locations using their smartphones, facilitating our efforts to target resources for that household. It’s a win for Children’s families because eliminating asthma triggers in the home means our kids will miss fewer school days, improving their lives and overall health,” says Ankoor Y. Shah, M.D., MBA, MPH, medical director for Children’s IMPACT DC Asthma Clinic.

Children’s collaborative project includes a number of partners, including:

Dr. Shah says the project will start in July 2019 with the pilot of virtual home visits starting in early 2020. This proof-of-concept model will hopefully be able to be replicated in other cities across the country.

Kofi Essel, M.D., M.P.H. and Ankoor Shah, M.D., M.B.A., M.P.H., named among 40 Under 40 Leaders in Minority Health

Ankoor Shah and Kofi Essel

Ankoor Shah, M.D., M.B.A., M.P.H., and Kofi Essel, M.D., M.P.H., were named 40 Under 40 Leaders in Minority Health.

Two doctors from Children’s National Health System are among the recipients of the 40 Under 40 Leaders in Minority Health award by the National Minority Quality Forum (NMQF) for 2019. Kofi Essel, M.D., M.P.H., is a pediatrician, Ankoor Shah, M.D., M.B.A., M.P.H., is the medical director of the IMPACT DC Asthma Clinic and also a pediatrician at Children’s National.

Founded in 1998, the NMFQ is dedicated to ensuring that high-risk racial and ethnic populations and communities receive optimal health care. The 40 individuals selected for this award represent the next generation of thought leaders in reducing health disparities.

Dr. Kofi Essel is a pediatrician at the Children’s Health Center Anacostia.  His focus and research has been around health equity, obesity, food insecurity and nutrition.

“Hunger strikes so many of our families,” says Dr. Essel, “In D.C., we were number one in the nation for having the highest rate of food hardship in households with children.”

Dr. Essel is involved with many organizations and initiatives that raise awareness about hunger and how much of an issue it is.  He strives to be a partner for the families that he serves, many of whom are in the fight against obesity, and works alongside them to improve their overall health.

“It’s a huge honor to receive recognition from this national organization,” says Dr. Kofi Essel, “Ultimately, it allows us to have a bit more of a platform to continue to advance some of the great work we’re doing with health disparities.”

Dr. Ankoor Shah is the medical director for IMPACT DC asthma clinic and a pediatrician at the Children’s Health Center at THEARC.  His focus includes improving pediatric population health and reducing child health asthma disparities.

“Through the coordination of the best in class care at Children’s National with amazing on the ground community partners, we have been able to transform the lives of the most at-risk children with asthma” says Dr. Shah.

Dr. Shah collaborates with organizations to improve the outcomes of kids with asthma by targeting intervention in high-risk areas.

“This award is recognition of the great work we’re doing in terms of improving asthma health in high-risk child populations throughout the District of Columbia.”

Both Dr. Essel and Dr. Shah are from Arkansas, attended Emory University and they did their residency together at Children’s National.

Congratulations to these wonderful doctors and leaders for receiving this award.

The 40 Under 40 recipients received their awards at the 2019 NMQF Leadership Summit on Health Disparities and CBC Spring Health Braintrust Gala Dinner on April 9.

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.
Electronic medical record on tablet

Children’s National submissions make hackathon finals

Electronic medical record on tablet

This April, the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at Children’s National (CTSI-CN) and The George Washington University (GW) will hold their 2nd Annual Medical and Health App Development Workshop. Of the 10 application (app) ideas selected for further development at the hackathon workshop, five were submitted by clinicians and researchers from Children’s National.

The purpose of the half-day hackathon is to develop the requirements and prototype user interface for 10 medical software applications that were selected from ideas submitted late in 2017. While idea submissions were not restricted, the sponsors suggested that they lead to useful medical software applications.

The following five app ideas from Children’s National were selected for the workshop:

  • A patient/parent decision tool that could use a series of questions to determine if the patient should go to the Emergency Department or to their primary care provider; submitted by Sephora Morrison, M.D., and Ankoor Shah, M.D., M.P.H.
  • The Online Treatment Recovery Assistance for Concussion in Kids (OnTRACK) smartphone application could guide children/adolescents and their families in the treatment of their concussion in concert with their health care provider; submitted by Gerard Gioia, Ph.D.
  • A genetic counseling app that would provide a reputable, easily accessible bank of counseling videos for a variety of topics, from genetic testing to rare disorders; submitted by Debra Regier, M.D.
  • An app that would allow the Children’s National Childhood and Adolescent Diabetes Program team to communicate securely and efficiently with diabetes patients; submitted by Cynthia Medford, R.N., and Kannan Kasturi, M.D.
  • An app that would provide specific evidence-based guidance for medical providers considering PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) for HIV prevention; submitted by Kyzwana Caves, M.D.

Kevin Cleary, Ph.D., technical director of the Bioengineering Initiative at Children’s National Health System, and Sean Cleary, Ph.D., M.P.H., associate professor in epidemiology and biostatistics at GW, created the hackathon to provide an interactive learning experience for people interested in developing medical and health software applications.

The workshop, which will be held on April 13, 2018, will start with short talks from experts on human factors engineering and the regulatory environment for medical and health apps. Attendees will then divide into small groups to brainstorm requirements and user interfaces for the 10 app ideas. After each group presents their concepts to all the participants, the judges will pick the winning app/group. The idea originator will receive up to $10,000 of voucher funding for their prototype development.

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.

Children’s National safety experts share strategies

Rahul Shah

Rahul Shah, M.D., Vice President and Chief Quality and Safety Officer at Children’s National Health System (CNHS), and his team joined pediatric quality and safety leaders from across the country in Orlando, Fla. for the Children’s Hospital Association’s 2017 Quality & Safety in Children’s Health Conference.

Earlier this month, Rahul Shah, M.D., Vice President and Chief Quality and Safety Officer at Children’s National Health System (CNHS), and his team joined pediatric quality and safety leaders from across the country in Orlando, Fla. for the Children’s Hospital Association’s 2017 Quality & Safety in Children’s Health Conference. Dr. Shah shared findings and strategies that have led Children’s National to be a leader in this field, and collaborated with peers to move the needle on pediatric safety in hospitals and improving the quality of care hospitals deliver.

Notable presentations from the Children’s National team included:

  • The Children’s National utilization of a safety culture survey called the Safety Attitude Questionnaire (SAQ), and the crucial role of ensuring leadership alignment in the survey process. Obtaining leadership buy-in and alignment allowed Children’s to accelerate the spread of identified opportunities for improvement within the organization.
  • The importance of an ongoing multi-disciplinary approach to care for psychiatry patients, a patient population that that continues to increase in American pediatric healthcare and requires innovative approaches. Children’s National team members emphasized the importance of training the hospital’s security teams and front-line caregivers in therapeutic interventions to seek optimal outcomes for patients, while respecting the complexity of their diagnoses.
  • How to drive reliability through apparent cause analyses. Kristen Crandall, Director of Patient Safety at Children’s National, shared examples of how to leverage data to effectively drive change in cause analyses. Cause analyses are fundamental tools for implementing improvement. The team highlighted the upcoming launch of a High Reliability Toolkit© developed at CNHS to ensure that action plans created from cause analyses are of adequate depth and sophistication to drive improvements.

Dr. Shah and his team also had the honor of delivering an Impact session on the final day of the conference, in which they discussed the applications of merging patient safety with patient experience. The team also shared the Children’s National approach to safety and service, which includes delivering a unified framework of high reliability through consistent messaging to demonstrate that when safety and service integrate and align, the sum is greater than the parts.