Quality Measurements

Expertise, technology and good systems should all lead to one thing - quality care. At Children's we participate in several benchmarking activities to monitor how we are doing. They range from national patient satisfaction comparisons to national service benchmarking groups and can include honors and designations like Magnet Nursing. We also put great confidence in our Length of Stay numbers, because kids who are better cared for go home faster. Here's a snapshot of how we're doing.

Patient Satisfaction:

Children's consistently scores in the 90th percentile (the top 10%) of our national benchmarking group, and we land at the very top in several inpatient and outpatient categories. These include speed of admission, pain control, home care instructions and patient-family info.

Neonatal Intensive Care:

Our outcomes with neonates under 1,500 grams are consistently better than those at other Level III centers in the state and across the nation. In a national comparative database, our mortality rate for this population is 13.1% compared to a national average of 19.3%. Our ‘case-mix index’ (a number that compares the severity of different populations), is the fourth highest of all 40 NICUs in a nationally comparative database. In other words, on average, the babies that come to Children’s are more seriously ill than those that come to 36 of the other NICUs, and yet we have better results than all of our regional and national peers.

Pediatric Intensive Care:

In the field of intensive care, severity adjusted mortality rate is a key baseline benchmark, and in this arena Children’s PICU is ranked in the best 10% in the country. The mortality rates are collated from a validated data set which consistently ranks Children’s in the top 1-2 PICU’s out of 33 benchmarked units for the past decade.

Cardiac Surgery:

Patients coming to The Willson Heart Center for cardiothoracic surgery had higher severity levels and were more likely to be less than a year old when compared to those going to hospitals in our national peer group. Despite these greater challenges, these patients had a survival rate of 94.7%.  This resulted in a mortality rate that is 30% lower than the nationwide average and 20% lower than other West Coast pediatric centers.

Plastic Surgery:

Children’s plastic and reconstructive surgery length of stay (LOS) is less than 3 ½ days, which is almost a full day shorter than the adjusted LOS for children having plastic surgery at 40 other pediatric hospitals across the nation. They achieve this impressive statistic while seeing a high volume of patients. The division serves over 1,650 children every year, with over 4,000 combined visits, day surgeries and inpatient stays. And each year they perform 500 plastic surgeries.

Echocardiography Laboratory:

Children’s Echo Lab is the first pediatric accredited lab in the USA (ICAEL).

Rehabilitation Center:

Children's has the only independent Pediatric Rehabilitation Center in California accredited by CARF, the  Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities.

Oncology:

Children's Craycroft Cancer Center is a full member of the Children's Oncology Group (COG) and has more than 300 patients on COG protocols at any given time. The Craycroft Center is one of the largest participants in COG research protocols on the West Coast. 

Ear, Nose and Throat:

ENT surgery length of stay (LOS) is a full day shorter than the adjusted LOS of peer hospitals. ENT surgeons at Children's perform 34% more surgeries than those at peer hospitals.

Nursing:

This is a point of great pride for us. Children's Hospital Central California was the first pediatric hospital west of the Rockies to receive the prestigious Magnet Nursing designation. We remain the only Children's Hospital in California north of Los Angeles to do so. Only 5% percent of all hospitals in the nation, adult and pediatric, have achieved Magnet status. Magnet Nursing is the highest nursing benchmark in the country.

Patient Safety:

Children's recieved the Leapfrog Group's award for patient safety in 2006.

More to come...

In our ongoing effort to present data that is relevant to our patients, their families and their physicians, Children's will continue to expand this section in the coming year. We hope to translate our data in a way that will help this "snapshot" become a much fuller picture of what we do at Children's, and in turn, how well we do it.