Quality of Care,
Transparency and Patient Safety

Ohio’s children’s hospitals are the national leader in quality of care for our youngest patients, and demonstrate this through a first-of-its-kind statewide collaborative to save children’s lives by improving quality in a meaningful, measureable way.

In our first effort, which began in 2007, participating hospitals implemented a Rapid Response Team protocol in each children’s hospital, and has continued working to reduce incidences of preventable cardiac and respiratory arrests outside of the neonatal and pediatric intensive care units by more than 46 percent.

Learn more by viewing our video and reading our collaborative update.

The Ohio Children's Hospital Association is a founding partner in Solutions for Patient Safety, a unique collaboration among health care providers and the business community with the shared aspiration of making Ohio the safest place in the nation for health care. At the launch event for Solutions for Patient Safety, Ohio Senate President Bill Harris commended the outstanding work of OCHA in a letter recognizing the founding partners for their goals.

In March 2010, the Ohio Children’s Hospitals Solutions for Patient Safety collaborative held its first quality summit, which brought together clinicians and hospital leaders to share best practices, experiences and opportunities. The collaborative is currently working to identify its next quality improvement initiative.

Through this partnership, Ohio’s children’s hospitals are working together to:

1. Reduce overall adverse drug events (ADEs) by 33 percent by June 2010, while also working to reduce opiate over-sedations by 50 percent. By meeting this goal, Ohio’s children’s hospitals could reduce health care costs in the state by up to $200,000 per month.

2. Reduce surgical site infections (SSIs) in designated cardiac, neurosurgery and orthopedic procedures by 50 percent. By meeting this goal, Ohio’s children’s hospitals could reduce health care costs in Ohio by more than $50,000 per month.

More information about the progress of Solutions for Patient Safety is available on the initiative's Web site.

Ohio’s children’s hospitals are also collaborating with the State of Ohio, specifically Ohio Medicaid, the Ohio Department of Health and the Ohio Department of Mental Health, to further quality and safety improvement goals through a new public-private partnership — BEACON (Best Evidence for Advancing Child Health in Ohio Now). Ohio’s proposed approach utilizes an existing infrastructure of networks within Ohio, including the state’s world-class children’s hospitals, pediatricians, perinatal providers, state agencies, professional organizations, family advocacy groups, and researchers.