Quality, efficiency bring Cincinnati Children's Hospital national spotlight

An article in the New York Times this weekend focused on Cincinnati Children's Hospital (CCH) and their work at managing health care outcomes and quality (Source: "Managing Outcomes Helps a Children’s Hospital Climb in Renown," Sept. 15, 2007.) As the article states, CCH "rigorously tracks how its patients fare, both in the hospital and after they leave. Many hospitals might claim to offer high-quality care. But they often have only the vaguest notion of how well their patients are doing, aside from a few basic measures like whether they survive surgery."

The article also says that CCH is one of the few medical centers in the country which collect data to see if patients are getting "good, effective care — and to look for ways to improve." As an example of this, CCH tracked how many patients developed surgical infections and why this happened. As a result, they were able to more than halve that number from 95 in 2005 to 42 in 2006. Because of CCH's strategy and overall patient focus, the hospital’s operating revenue "has grown by about 50 percent over the last three years, to just over $1 billion for fiscal 2006."