STANFORD, Calif-- Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford announced today the launch of a new Web site that will allow visitors to access a variety of data about the hospital’s performance. This move toward greater data transparency is another milestone in the hospital’s ongoing campaign to improve and communicate patient safety and quality of care.
 
“Several studies have shown that data transparency is associated with improved clinical outcomes for patients,” said Paul Sharek, MD, the hospital’s chief clinical patient safety officer. “Our philosophy has always been ‘you can’t improve it if you don’t measure it,’ and we feel it’s important to pass this information along to our patients and their families.”
 
“We’re taking ownership of and accepting accountability for the quality of care we provide to our patients and expectant mothers,” said Packard Children’s president and CEO Christopher Dawes. “These data provide a true understanding of that level of care and our commitment to delivering it.” Packard Children’s is the first children’s hospital in California, and one of only a few in the country, to voluntarily report clinical quality outcomes.

The Web site (http://quality.lpch.org), currently lists six primary quality measures. These include mortality rates, 31-day re-admission rates, catheter-associated bloodstream infection rates in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, and the likelihood that pediatric inpatients, obstetric inpatients, and clinic patients would recommend Packard Children’s to other families. The hospital plans to add additional data in the future.
 
Hospitals routinely rank themselves against regional and national outcomes standards, but they don’t always make such data public. Recently, patient safety organizations like the Leapfrog Group have launched consumer-oriented Web sites that allow consumers and purchasers of health care to make informed decisions about the quality of care offered by individual hospitals. The Joint Commission, an independent, not-for-profit organization, also considers quality and outcomes rankings when setting standards and accrediting hospitals nationwide.
 
Packard Children’s has an award-winning history of performing very well in a variety of patient safety measures. The hospital won the Child Health Corporation of America’s Race for Results award in both 2005 and 2007 for enhancing medication safety and implementing a Rapid Response Team to proactively address clinical deterioration in severely ill children before they require intensive care unit intervention. In 2006, Packard Children’s received a perfect score from the Leapfrog Group based on its adherence to 24 recommended quality and safety measures.
 
“This is all about continuous improvement,” said Sharek. “Our first goal is to improve the quality of care we provide. Our second is to empower the community to make educated choices about their family’s health care. We believe this transparency is good for the community, good for the institution, and good for our patients.”
 
About Lucile Packard Children's Hospital
Ranked as one of the nation's best pediatric hospitals by U.S. News & World Report, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford is a 272-bed hospital devoted to the care of children and expectant mothers. Providing pediatric and obstetric medical and surgical services and associated with the Stanford University School of Medicine, Packard Children's offers patients locally, regionally and nationally the full range of health care programs and services, from preventive and routine care to the diagnosis and treatment of serious illness and injury. For more information, visit www.lpch.org.