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, FierceHealthcare previously reported.
To learn more:
- read the Middletown Journal article
- here's a press release (.pdf)