The Department of Pediatrics is committed to improving the safety and quality of care services for the patients and communities we serve. Our quality efforts are grounded in the science of improvement and complement our ongoing quality assurance efforts that ensure compliance with healthcare standards. Safety is our core value, inclusive of both our patients and our employees, and factors in complex healthcare processes, the use of technology, and the handoff of information between multiple teams. Similar to other complex industries, we aim to use high-reliability principles to provide safe care. We build structures, processes, operational rules, and culture to become a high-reliability organization.
Our vision is to reduce or eliminate serious harm to our patients while we care for them at NewYork-Presbyterian Komansky Children’s Hospital. Our mission is to apply scientific quality improvement methods and use concepts of high-reliability organizations while partnering with families and front-line staff to improve our outcomes.
Our guiding principles of quality and patient safety improvement include:
- leadership commitment
- staff-level empowerment and accountability to drive change
- multidisciplinary collaboration
- integration of trainees in organizational quality and safety initiatives
- initiative alignment with institutional goals
- structured methodology and data-driven approaches
- continuous integration of high-reliability principles
- patient- and family-centered framework
Our ongoing quality assurance efforts ensure compliance with Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and Joint Commission standards.
Learning Collaboratives
Learning networks are very important in the field of pediatrics due to the major limitations posed by having a small number of patients at one site. Learning networks are multi-site, practice-based clinical networks that use data for research and improvement. By nature, they are multidisciplinary and involve engaged patients, families, clinicians and scientists working on measurable outcomes.
National Networks
Children’s Hospitals’ Solutions for Patient Safety Network
The Children’s Hospitals’ Solutions for Patient Safety (SPS) Network is a 110+ site network of children’s hospitals in North America, caring for 50 percent of all children hospitalized in the U.S., with the goal of eliminating serious harm throughout all children’s hospitals.
ImproveCareNow
ImproveCareNow (ICN), a network focused onpediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), aims to transform healthcare and costs for all children and adolescents with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, by building a sustainable, collaborative chronic care network. ImproveCareNow enables patients, families, clinicians and researchers to work together in a learning healthcare system to accelerate innovation, discovery and the application of new knowledge.
The Komansky Children’s Hospital Quality Council
The Komansky Children’s Hospital Quality Council (KCHQC) meets monthly and includes members from our Family Advisory Council (FAC), faculty, staff and residents. Dr. S. Nena Osorio, Director of Quality, Patient Safety and Family Involvement, is the Quality Council Chair.