Take the next step in improving your ED’s pediatric readiness: Enroll in NPRQI

Your emergency department (ED) has taken the National Pediatric Readiness Project (NPRP) assessment and identified its gaps.

But how do you move from identifying gaps to improving patient outcomes?

The National Pediatric Readiness Quality Initiative (NPRQI) is a new, free platform that enables EDs to measure and analyze – in real-time and at the patient level – their progress on quality metrics that improve outcomes for children. In addition to a custom dashboard, the platform provides benchmarking data and reports that can be shared with hospital/ED leadership on quality and patient safety.

“Results from the NPRP assessment showed that engaging in quality improvement equates to a 26-point increase in pediatric readiness,” says Kate Remick, MD, NPRQI Executive Director and NPRP Co-Director. “That means having a QI plan has the potential to shift an ED to the highest quartile of pediatric readiness. Just last month, researchers demonstrated that higher pediatric readiness at 983 EDs could have saved 1,400 children’s lives.”

The NPRQI platform was developed specifically with small community and rural hospitals in mind – no specialized training or technology is needed to work with the platform. Ideally, the NPRQI team says EDs should enter a minimum of 30 patient charts each quarter to adequately track QI measures, meaning that on average, data entry will require an estimated 2-4 hours a month.

Tracking progress is key

Participating EDs can choose to track any of 28 quality metrics that cover the most common pediatric presentations. The metrics cover seven different focus areas.

• Patient assessment
• Interfacility transfers
• Clinical conditions:
  • Head trauma
  • Seizures
  • Respiratory distress
  • Vomiting
  • Suicidality

The focus areas were developed by a Quality Improvement and Analytics Advisory Board of more than 25 professional organizations and subject matter experts. Their findings were published last year in BMJ Open Quality.

“We prioritized metrics that are relevant and accessible to EDs of any pediatric volume and in any geographic area,” says Remick.

How to register

Registration is by ED or hospital. Typically the ED nurse manager, ED director, site administrator, or pediatric emergency care coordinator (PECC) should be the point person for registering on behalf of their organization.

Registration is a two-step process:

1. Providing information about your ED or hospital and team members, which takes approximately 10 minutes; and
2. Routing the participant organization agreement (POA) for signature by the appropriate leadership, which can average one month. (Completing the POA enrolls an ED or hospital in a patient safety organization (PSO) umbrella for protections given the collection of patient-level data.)

Open enrollment begins in early April. After that, enrollment will be on a quarterly basis. The first enrollment period will be April-June.

Leveraging NPRQI through an upcoming QI Collaborative

The NPRQI will form the foundation for the upcoming Pediatric Readiness Quality Improvement Collaborative, set to launch in late spring. NPRQI is funded through an EMSC Targeted Issues Grant.