Collaborative quality improvement in the cardiac intensive care unit: development of the Paediatric Cardiac Critical Care Consortium (PC4)

Abstract

Despite many advances in recent years for patients with critical paediatric and congenital cardiac disease, significant variation in outcomes remains across hospitals. Collaborative quality improvement has enhanced the quality and value of health care across specialties, partly by determining the reasons for variation and targeting strategies to reduce it. Developing an infrastructure for collaborative quality improvement in paediatric cardiac critical care holds promise for developing benchmarks of quality, to reduce preventable mortality and morbidity, optimise the long-term health of patients with critical congenital cardiovascular disease, and reduce unnecessary resource utilisation in the cardiac intensive care unit environment. The Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Consortium (PC4) has been modelled after successful collaborative quality improvement initiatives, and is positioned to provide the data platform necessary to realise these objectives. We describe the development of PC4 including the philosophical, organisational, and infrastructural components that will facilitate collaborative quality improvement in paediatric cardiac critical care.

Keywords: Critical care; cardiac surgery; paediatric; quality improvement.

Figure 1. Map showing location of current PC⁴ participants

Figure 2. Cardiac intensive care encounters accrued by month

Figure 3. PC⁴ organisational structure

Figure 4. Conceptual model of postoperative complications leading to mortality