Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine recently announce the launch of a national quality improvement center in partnership with the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). The Emergency Medical Services for Children Innovation and Improvement Center (EIIC) was created to improve the quality of care and outcomes for children across the U.S. who are in need of urgent or emergency care.
More than 27 million children in the U.S. visit emergency centers each year, with almost 2 million of those visits arriving to the hospital by Emergency Medical Services (EMS), also known as pre-hospital care.
“This center will focus on improving outcomes for children by developing and implementing quality improvement strategies that enhance pediatric emergency medical services both in the pre-hospital and hospital settings in all states and territories in the U.S.,” said Dr. Charles Macias, director of the EIIC. “This historic partnership between a pediatric hospital, academic center and the HRSA is truly transforming the way we look at providing and delivering health care.”
As part of the federal government’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau, the EIIC will work collaboratively with teams across the nation to focus efforts on quality improvement projects and initiatives to ensure every child has access to optimal pediatric urgent and emergency care no matter where they live or travel. The teams at Texas Children’s and Baylor will collaborate with partners at the Emergency Nurses Association, the National Association of State EMS Officials, the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Pediatrics. They will use a clinical systems integration framework to provide the emergency care community with the training, support and tools to use quality improvement methodology in order to reduce morbidity and mortality in children.
Two specific examples of activities aimed at accomplishing this goal include the establishment of a National Pediatric Emergency Department Facility Recognition Program for all states; and enhancement of pediatric readiness through child specific equipment, training and systems improvement targeting the more than 4,000 hospital ECs nationwide.
Work at Baylor will leverage the expertise of faculty and programs including the Center for Collaborative and Interactive Technologies, a renowned center that develops enhanced technology-based strategies for evidence-based clinical support and communication. Additionally, the EIIC will benefit from the strength of the faculty of the Departments of Pediatrics and Surgery and integrate the Center for Child Health Policy and Advocacy at Texas Children’s. Additional work at Texas Children’s will integrate the expertise from the Quality Program to include evidence-based practice support from the Evidence Based Outcomes Center, headed by Macias.
The EIIC’s leadership team consists of Macias, who will serve as director; Krisanne Graves, who will be the coordinator; and Drs. Manish Shah and Katherine Remick.
Officially launched this month, the EIIC hopes to demonstrate the national impact of leveraging quality improvement science, the experiential knowledge at Texas Children’s and Baylor, as well as the expertise at the multiple professional societies and federal organizations, to successfully transform and improve health care outcomes for children across the country.
To learn more about this new center, visit www.EMSCImprovement.Center.