Quality

Children are not just small adults. They belong in a children’s hospital where they can get the specialized care they deserve from pediatric doctors, nurses and specialists who understand their unique needs.

With a proven track record of providing world-class care to our patients in more than 30 pediatric specialties, Children's is a model for other pediatric hospitals. We are committed to keeping patients safe, providing the same standard of care in each facility and ensuring there is effective communication between patients, parents and caregivers.

Patient safety

Our team aims to provide a safe and healing place for all patients and their families. For us, one is not zero—our goal is to help make sure every patient receives the highest level of quality care.

To constantly improve patient safety, Children's uses programs that help us prevent problems, protect your child and partner with families. This allows parents the freedom to give their child the love, support and reassurance only a parent can provide.

Prevention strategies

• Fall prevention: Some of our patients are more at risk for fall-related injuries. We teach these children and their families how to prevent falls. 
• Safe radiology: Our team uses some of the lowest possible radiation doses in the country. We even reduced radiation exposure by as much as 50 percent for some scans. 
• Safe surgery checklist: Before every surgery we use a checklist that has been proven to lessen surgical complications. 
• Speak UP: We encourage patients, families and staff to tell us about every single concern, so that we can fix it quickly. 
• Surgical site infection (SSI): Infections after surgery are a serious concern. To prevent them, we use special skin disinfectants and give infection-fighting antibiotics for all surgeries when needed. 
• TLC on I.V.: I.V. safety is very important. Before giving a dose, the nurse performs TLC: touch the I.V. display, look at the dosage and call the I.V. information out loud to another nurse. This is how we make sure that your child gets the right amount of the right medicine.

Protection strategies

• Medication safety: No interruptions are allowed when medications are being given. Distractions cause errors. Our doctors and nurses confirm the Five Rights before giving medicine to all patients: right patient, right time/frequency, right dose, right route and right drug. 
• Patient identification: We always confirm every child's identity before we give medicine, draw blood, begin feeding or start other procedures. 
• Vital sign monitoring: Your child's doctors and nurses will keep a close eye on his vital signs, like respiratory, neurologic and cardiovascular status. 
• Pressure ulcer oversight team: Children's has specially-trained nurses to help your child avoid developing hospital-acquired pressure ulcers. 
• Breast milk identification: Each infant should get only his own mother's breast milk, so we label each bottle and check it against the IDs of both mother and child.

Partner strategies

• Rapid response: Teams of highly skilled nurses and respiratory therapists are immediately available to respond to patients who need urgent care anywhere in the hospital. 
• Transfer of care: Any time your child's care is sent to a new location or group of caregivers, we will work to make the transition as safe as possible.

Infection prevention

Children who get an infection while in the hospital are more likely to stay sick longer and spend more days in the hospital. We take extra steps to control infections from spreading to everyone at Children's, healthy or sick.

Our team of highly trained, nationally certified infection prevention specialists work with our staff to help make visits to Children’s as safe as possible. Our infection prevention rates show how we rank among the best healthcare providers in the nation.

Infection prevention programs

Children's has received several infection prevention awards due to our successful programs, including:

Dress to Protect Program
Coughing, sneezing and contaminated clothing can give your child an infection. The Dress to Protect Program gives protective clothing, like masks, gloves and gowns, to everyone to wear in areas where infection is present. This keeps germs from spreading outside isolation areas.

Immunization Program
Our entire Children's staff is current on immunizations. Your child can also get routine immunizations during his visit. Ask your child's doctor or nurse for more information.

Speak UP
We encourage doctors, nurses, staff, patients and families to tell us about any and all concerns.

For more information contact Kim Murphy.

Meet our quality team

• Terry Brown, MS, CCC-SLP, HACP; Manager, System Regulatory Services
• Linda Cole, RN, MBA, FACHE, NEA-BC
• Lisa Davis, R Ph
• Jim Fortenberry, MD, FAAP, MCCM; Chief Medical Officer
• Gary Frank, MD, MS
• Reena Gupta, RN, MSN, MPH, PMP, CSSBB, CPHQ
• Jeff Rehberg
• Natalie Tillman, RN, BSN; Manager of Patient Safety and Clinical Effectiveness
• J Renee Watson, MSN, RNC, BSN, CPHQ, CIC, CPS

There are several things to consider when choosing a hospital for your child, including how many patients the care team treats and how well they treat those patients. Below you can read more about how and why we measure our performance. You will also find links to graphs of our results compared to national standards. Our results span the entire Children's system, which includes three hospitals and 26 neighborhood locations.

Numbers of patients (volumes)
A hospital's "volumes" are the number of patients it treats. Hospitals with higher volumes are able to do more procedures and gain more experience treating injuries and diseases. This makes a hospital better able to care for its patients.

Results (outcomes)
Outcomes are the results of our clinical efforts. They reveal how effective we are at doing our jobs.

Sharing information (transparency)
Children’s believes in being open and honest, which is why we make our volumes and outcomes are easy to find and visible, to everyone.