Ohio Children's Hospitals Release Results of Patient Safety Collaboration

The members of the Ohio Children’s Hospitals’ Solutions for Patient Safety (Ohio SPS) announce that over the past three years, they have prevented serious harm in nearly 230 patients and eliminated nearly $6 million from the healthcare system in Ohio by working together to improve patient safety statewide.

The Cardinal Health Foundation, which hosted a summit of the Ohio SPS hospitals recently, has been a major funder and partner of the initial and ongoing efforts.

“We initiated the partnership with Ohio children’s hospitals with the knowledge that collaboration among these institutions could yield extraordinary improvement in patient safety,” says George Barrett, chairman and CEO of Cardinal Health. “We are extremely pleased with these early findings, which demonstrate the dramatic progress made in reducing harm to patients and in transforming the culture of safety within their institutions. We are excited to see other hospitals around the country joining this collaborative.”

The Ohio SPS effort includes Akron Children’s Hospital, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Children’s Hospital Cleveland Clinic, Dayton Children’s, Mercy Children’s Hospital, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, ProMedica Toledo Children’s Hospital and UH/Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital.

The hospitals began working together in 2009, with a focus on surgical site infections (SSI) and adverse drug events (ADE). From 2009 to 2012, they reduced SSIs in designated cardiac, neurosurgery and orthopedic procedures by 40 percent and adverse drug events by 42 percent. In 2012, the hospitals broadened their scope of work and began focusing on eliminating serious safety events (SSE) and reduced occurrences by more than 70 percent.

The Ohio SPS hospitals are also leading a national effort, initially funded in part by the federal Partnership for Patients program, to help 80+ children’s hospitals in more than 30 states achieve similar results by focusing on eliminating specific hospital-acquired conditions and enhancing a culture of safety at their institutions. Since 2012, this national effort has led to an estimated savings of more than $60 million and saved 2,500 children from serious harm.

“Since the formation of SPS in Ohio, we’ve said ‘we won’t compete when it comes to patient safety in our children’s hospitals,’” says Michael Fisher, president and CEO of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and chair of SPS. “Our shared goal is zero harm – putting patients and families first by embracing a culture of safety. That’s how we have achieved meaningful change here in our state and have led the nation by sharing our experiences, strategies and tactics with children’s hospitals throughout the country.”

Ohio SPS’s efforts benefit not only children’s hospital patients and families, but the state as a whole.

“More than half of the patients in Ohio children’s hospitals rely on Medicaid for health care coverage, so when we take costs out of the system, we are also helping all Ohio taxpayers,” says William Considine, president and CEO of Akron Children’s Hospital and chair of the Ohio Children’s Hospital Association.

Additional funding for the Ohio SPS initiative is provided by Interact for Health, Medical Mutual, American Electric Power, the George Gund Foundation, AK Steel and Humana.

Source: Cardinal Health Foundation