Perioperative Quality Improvement in Children’s Hospitals Neonatal Consortium NICUs

Abstract

Infants admitted to NICUs in children’s hospitals represent a different population than those in a traditional birth hospital. The patients in a children’s hospital NICU often have the most complex neonatal diagnoses and are cared for by various subspecialists. The Children’s Hospitals Neonatal Consortium is a collaborative of more than 40 NICUs that collect data and perform quality improvement (QI) work across the United States and Canada. The collaborative’s database provides an opportunity to benchmark clinical outcomes for this specialized population and to support the QI efforts. In this review, we summarize the success of individual collaborative QI projects focused on improving the care of the neonate in the perioperative period related to clinical team handoffs, postoperative hypothermia prevention, and improvement of postoperative pain management. The collaborative’s experience can serve as a model for other national collaboratives seeking to support QI efforts.