Children's Hospitals in Washington, D.C. and Palo Alto Receive Quality and Safety Award;...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Two prominent children's hospitals, Children's National Medical Center, Washington, D.C. and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford, Palo Alto, CA, were awarded with national quality and safety awards sponsored by Child Health Corporation of America (CHCA).

The "RACE for Results" awards, sponsored by CHCA, a business alliance of 42 children's hospitals in the United States and Canada, are given to children's hospitals that demonstrate significant and sustained improvements in care through the use of CHCA's data and improvement resources. This year's winners were selected from 12 entries representing children's hospitals across the United States. Judges included David Classen, M.D., M.S., First Consulting Group, Carol Haraden, PhD., Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and Lloyd Provost, M.S., Associates in Process Improvement.

"Our Owner Hospitals are reaching higher levels of safety, efficiency and effectiveness by using CHCA data and improvement resources to create and implement best practices, reduce variances in care, eliminate waste, reduce costs, and improve overall patient safety. The winners of this year's 'RACE for Results' award have successfully used our services and tools to advance closer to their improvement goals," said Donna Payne, senior vice president of Performance Improvement, CHCA.

Children's National Medical Center was selected as a 2005 "RACE for Results" winner for its initiative to improve infection rates in VP shunt surgeries. By changing antibiotics to Oxacillin, administering prophylactic antibiotics earlier and instituting a 24-48 hour post-surgery antibiotic regimen, the hospital improvement team was able to reduce infections by 55% in a 12-month post intervention follow-up. Readmission rates due to infections also decreased.

Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford received the "RACE for Results" award for its efforts to improve medication practices. By redesigning the medication process, managing high alert medications and involving front line staff in medication safety, The hospital decreased the incidence of adverse drug events (ADEs) with harm by 70% over a 24-month period. The pharmacy intervention rates, the number of steps in the pharmacy process, and the number of medication error incident reports all substantially decreased.

CHCA provides a range of products and services designed to improve quality, reduce costs and increase revenue. CHCA represents more than 20,000 physicians, 100,000 employees, $14 billion in revenue and $1.8 billion in overall medical, surgical and pharmaceutical products. You can learn more about CHCA at www.chca.com.