CHA is committed to expanding efforts to improve in children’s health care and child health. Children’s hospitals are considering how to expand their focus and redesign their care delivery systems for better outcomes.
Hear from CHA's Quality Committee Chair and President and CEO of Children's Mercy Kansas City, Paul Kempinski, about the foundations of quality improvement as we move into the future.
Continued Evolution in Quality
Together, children’s hospitals are working to achieve improvement in health outcomes, experience and value for children and families in their hospitals, satellite facilities, physician practices and communities. They are rethinking their role in broader health issues, building upon foundational quality efforts and examining challenges and opportunities. This includes digging deeper into areas such as health equity or behavioral health and maintain high relevance to a child’s overall health.
Areas of Focus
Quality efforts are driven by the evolving priorities of children’s hospitals and health systems and the communities they serve and reflecting the multi-year strategic priorities of CHA. These efforts will focus on behavioral and mental health, health equity, analytic enhancements and visualization, clinical improvement and employee health and well-being.
The Institute of Medicine’s STEEEP framework for quality health care provides six domains to ground the work:
- Safe. Avoiding harm to patients from the care that is intended to help them.
- Timely. Reducing waits and sometimes harmful delays for both those who receive and those who give care.
- Effective. Providing services based on scientific knowledge to all who could benefit and refraining from providing services to those not likely to benefit (avoiding underuse and misuse, respectively).
- Efficient. Avoiding waste, including waste of equipment, supplies, ideas, and energy.
- Equitable. Providing care that does not vary in quality because of personal characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, geographic location and socioeconomic status.
- Patient-centered. Providing care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs and values and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions.
Collaborative Efforts
As children’s hospitals begin to shape the next generation of quality, Children’s Hospital Association is working with children’s hospitals and health systems to support initiatives and accelerate progress. Get involved in the conversation by joining online discussions dedicated to quality, registering for webinars and joining virtual and in-person meetings.
