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Quality Improvement

Leaders at Children’s National have developed quality improvement key projects to enhance patient care and reduce harm, including:

Safety in Numbers: Driving 10,000 Good Catches – 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 – 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 – 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 – 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.
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