Evaluation of the Ohio Children’s Hospital Solutions for Patient Safety Learning Network

Together with colleagues from the BU School of Public Health, HPI researchers are conducting a formative evaluation of the Ohio Children’s Hospital Solutions for Patient Safety Learning Network. The collaborative network is sponsored by the Ohio Children’s Hospital Association and led by the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC).  Its principal aim is to bring together children’s hospitals in the state for the purpose of sharing best practices and disseminating patient safety “trigger tools” developed by CCHMC to improve the quality of children’s health care statewide.

The evaluation aims to: (1) assess the implementation experiences of seven Ohio Children’s Hospital organizations involved in the Learning Network; and (2) identify facilitators and barriers to hospitals’ progress with several patient safety initiatives, including how organizational context, such as the hospital’s culture or history with quality improvement, influences the change process. Patient safety initiatives include efforts to reduce adverse drug events (ADEs) and surgical site infections (SSIs).

The Organizational Transformation Model (OTM), which was developed under the evaluation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pursuing Perfection program, serves as the framework for assessing participants’ strategies for achieving change. The project involves site visits to participating hospitals for interviews with key informants (top leaders and clinicians) in each organization. Information from the interviews is being used to: identify facilitators and barriers contributing to organizations’ successes or failures; assess how well concordance with elements of the OTM contributes to hospitals’ abilities to meet their goals; and determine the extent to which implementation of the patient safety initiatives for ADEs and SSIs impacts each organization’s broader capacity for transformational change. A first round of site visits was conducted in late 2010, and the team interviewed leaders of the Learning Network.

The evaluation team, led by Martin P. Charns of BUSPH, includes HPI investigators Alan B. Cohen and Sally K. Holmes, as well as several colleagues from the BU School of Public Health.