Quality and Safety

• Safe: Patients are not harmed during their care.
• Timely: Patients are treated without unnecessary delay.
• Effective: Patients are treated with evidence-based medicine.
• Efficient: Patients are treated without waste or overuse.
• Patient-centered: Patients are made to feel trust, belonging and hope. Patients and families are involved in decision-making.
• Equitable: Providing care that does not vary in quality due to gender, ethnicity, geographical location, or socioeconomic status.

Examples of how AdventHealth for Children is continuously reviewing and improving our quality assurance and patient safety standards:

• Member, Children’s Hospitals Solutions for Patient Safety, and participant in national quality assurance initiatives
• Member, Children’s Hospital Association, and participant in collaborative efforts to improve patient safety
• Member, The Florida Health Information Exchange, to ensure the secure and electronic sharing of health information between health care providers
• Use of electronic medical records to ensure consistency and completeness in patient records
• Medication safety scanning to ensure children receive the medications they need
• Breast milk scanning to improve patient safety
• Locked units with secure badging so parents can take comfort in knowing only approved and essential personnel will be on their child’s unit
• Vaccine compliance is required by staff including flu vaccine and DTaP (Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Pertussis) vaccine
• A comprehensive emergency preparedness plan to ensure that the safety and wellbeing of patients are assured in the event of a disaster.
• Daily safety huddles, safety briefs and debriefs to improve communication and quality, and assure exceptional care as recommended by The Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality, and Children’s Hospitals Solutions for Patient Safety.
• Simulation training and techniques in a variety of programs designed to enhance the skills of healthcare providers. Simulation in health care creates a safe learning environment in which researchers and practitioners can test new clinical processes and enhance their individual and team skills. Many simulation applications involve artificial "patients" that can show symptoms and respond to simulated treatment, allowing practitioners to hone their clinical skills without putting patients at risk.
• Family Advisory Council and Teen Advisory Council whose members provide guidance for many key decisions regarding quality of patient care. Committees include Patient Safety Quality and Shared Leadership Quality & Practice.
• Journey to become a High Reliability Organization, an environment in which potential problems are anticipated, detected early, and virtually always responded to early enough to prevent catastrophic consequences. This mindset is supported by five characteristic ways of thinking: preoccupation with failure; reluctance to simplify explanations for operations, successes, and failures; sensitivity to operations (situation awareness); deference to frontline expertise; and commitment to resilience.

Safety and quality is an integral part of our approach to caring for children, and we hold ourselves to the highest standards. But we understand parents want as much information as possible about the care their child receives. The following is an overview of external organizations that provide information and reports on quality.

We’re honored to be recognized by U.S. News & World Report as one of America’s best children’s hospitals for newborn care.

The Leapfrog Group has recognized AdventHealth for Children as one of the top children’s hospitals in the United States, with only 12 children’s hospitals in the nation receiving this award. This elite distinction was given for excellence in patient safety, surgical expertise, maternity care and leadership, and rates the quality of our care as the highest in the nation.

For a second time, the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) granted AdventHealth for Children Magnet® recognition, which establishes us as a national leader in nursing and patient care. Only 7 percent of the nation’s hospitals have received this recognition.

​​​​​Our Pediatric Cellular Therapy program is accredited by the Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy (FACT), an internationally-recognized accrediting body for hospitals offering stem cell transplant. This means you can feel confident your child is in the best hands, as our team has met the most rigorous standards in every aspect of stem cell therapy.

AdventHealth for Children has been recognized as the #1 program in Florida for pediatric neurology and neurosurgery by Newsweek.

AdventHealth for Children has received the gold designation of The Beacon Award of Excellence and is one of only 10 hospitals in the country to have achieved this recognition. This award— a significant milestone on the path to exceptional patient care and healthy work environments — recognizes unit caregivers who successfully improve patient outcomes and align practices with AACN’s six Healthy Work Environment Standards. Units that achieve this three-year designation meet national criteria consistent with the ANCC Magnet Recognition Program®, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the National Quality Healthcare Award.

The Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (ELSO) is an international non-profit consortium of health care centers and individuals. This organization is dedicated to the development, evaluation and improvement of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and other therapies to support failing organ systems in newborns, children and adults.

AdventHealth for Children is an ELSO Center of Excellence in Life Support, Platinum Level, in collaboration with AdventHealth. We are one of only 32 recognized Extracorporeal Life Support centers worldwide and the only awarded center in Central Florida.

This distinguished award recognizes programs that demonstrate an exceptional commitment to providing quality care for high-risk patients needing specialized life support. This means that at AdventHealth for Children, we have the processes, procedures and systems in place that promote excellence and exceptional care in ECMO treatment.

DNV Accreditation requires an annual survey and the organization’s continual compliance with the Det Norske Veritas Accreditation process. Focusing on aspects of quality, innovation and continual improvement, DNV accredits health care providers across the US, including multi-hospital systems, community hospitals, teaching institutions and regional medical centers.

Accreditation is a process of review that healthcare organizations participate in to demonstrate the ability to meet predetermined criteria and standards of accreditation established by a professional accrediting agency. DNV integrates the CMS Conditions of Participation with the internationally recognized ISO 9001 quality management framework.

We are the first and only accreditation program to integrate the CMS Conditions of Participation with the ISO 9001 Quality Management Program.

DNV GL is your partner for safer healthcare, providing quality driven accreditation and clinical excellence certifications to America’s hospitals.

ISO is a nationally recognized quality management system of standards. The standards provide guidance and tools for companies and organizations who want to ensure that their products and services consistently meet customer’s requirements, and that quality is consistently improved. AdventHealth for Children is ISO 2008 certified.

AdventHealth for Children's surgical center has been verified as a Level 1 Children’s Surgery Center by the American College of Surgeons Children’s Surgery Verification Quality Improvement Program (ACS CSV).

The ACS CSV program was developed to improve the quality of children’s surgical care by creating a system that allows for a prospective match of every child’s individual surgical needs with a care environment that has optimal pediatric resources. CSV standards ensure that children facing surgery receive care under a multidisciplinary program with quality improvement and safety processes, data collection, and appropriate resources provided to them as patients at the hospital.

The CSV program is based on other nationally recognized American College of Surgeons quality improvement programs that have measurably improved surgical quality and have prevented complications, reduced costs, and saved lives.

The National Database of Nursing Quality IndicatorsTM (NDNQI®) is the only national nursing database that provides quarterly and annual reporting of structure, process, and outcome indicators to evaluate nursing care at the unit level.

We submit data to NDNQI for the following:

• CLABSI (all inpatient units)
• CAUTI (all inpatient units)
• VAP (all applicable inpatient units)
• Pressure Ulcers (all inpatient units)
• Falls (all inpatient units plus CEC and POPS)
• RN Satisfaction (annual survey) – all units and departments with nursing
• RN Education/Certifications (all inpatient units plus CEC and POPS)

The AdventHealth for Children reporting plan for NHSN/CDC is as follows;

1. Device Associated Module

• CLABSI
• CAUTI- minus NICU
• PedVap- PICU, PCIC

2. Procedure Associated Module

• Colon Surgery
• HIP prosthesis HPRO
• Knee prosthesis KPRO
• Abdominal hysterectomy HYST

3. Facility wide In-Patient Lab ID events

• C-Diff, MRSA

We participate in two cardiac registries. The IMPACT Registry compiles and analyzes data on pediatric and adult congenital heart disease (CHD) patients who undergo diagnostic catheterizations and catheter-based interventions. The Society for Thoracic Surgeons (STS) database is a collaborative registry focusing on cardiac surgery outcomes.

We are members of the Children’s Hospitals Neonatal Consortium (CHNC) and submit NICU patient data to the Children’s Hospitals Neonatal Database (CHND), so that we can work with other hospitals to establish and update best practice standards for these tiny patients.