News

Infection rates fall 60% with children's hospital collaboration

Children's hospitals across Ohio are finding that collaboration has
improved care quality. After teaming up in 2009, the eight
participating hospitals saw surgical site infections drop 60 percent
and adverse drug reactions fall 34.5 percent, reported the Middletown
Journal.

Moreover, the collaborative efforts saved more than 7,700 children
from unnecessary harm and prevented $11.8 million in unnecessary costs
since the pediatric partnership began, the hospitals said in a
statement last month.

Following such success, the state's children's hospitals are leading
national efforts to improve hospital care and patient safety. They are
establishing definitions for pediatric harm measures, which the
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will consider adopting, the
article noted.

"As far as I know, we are the only state where the children's
hospitals have come together to do something like this," Dayton
Children's President and CEO David Kinsaul told the Journal. "Rather
than each of us trying to go out and duplicate efforts, we're learning
and sharing," he said.

Hospitals trying to save lives and money through partnerships should
look to Ohio for direction. Last fall, the state demonstrated the
benefits of collaboration when teamwork among 53 of its hospitals
resulted in central line-associated bloodstream infections in
intensive care units dropping by 48 percent over 22 months. The
hospitals also saved Ohio (combined with two other states) more than
$4,558,000, prevented 86 bloodstream infections and saved 17 lives