Transforming Healthcare Delivery

What’s Driving Our Work at Cincinnati Children's?  

At Cincinnati Children’s, improvement is our passion. We began to focus intensively on transformational improvement in 1999 and over the years we have documented better patient outcomes and family experiences, a dramatic reduction in hospital-acquired infections, more reliable systems for delivering care safely, greater efficiency and timeliness, better management of hospital resources, and significant savings to the healthcare delivery system.  

Our achievements have earned national and international recognition. But we know that the work is far from done.  

Continuing the Journey

Our experience has given us a deeper understanding of the approaches that drive and sustain improvement. We’re working every day to apply this knowledge to continue the work of improving child health in our hospital, our community and beyond. To accelerate this work, we launched the James M. Anderson Center for Health Systems Excellence in 2010.  

From the start of our journey, we’ve known that large-scale change begins with a vision for perfect care. We continue to challenge ourselves by setting perfection goals. 

Inspired by the outcomes we’ve seen and those we’re determined to achieve in the future, we’re sharing our knowledge and learning from others on the same improvement journey.   

Lessons Learned

Here are a few of the most important lessons we’ve learned about the principles and behaviors that drive organizational improvement: 

Healthcare organizations have much to learn from the families we serve  

• Partner with patients and families
• They bring knowledge and experience beyond healthcare
• The voice of the family is a powerful motivator for change

Large-scale change begins with transformational goals

• Define strategic priorities
• Set perfection goals
• Systematically measure outcomes 

Build the organization’s capacity to execute improvement

• Integrate and align the board, leadership team, institutional resources, frontline staff and stakeholders
• Invest in QI expertise; systems for collecting, measuring, analyzing and reporting data; institutional processes and support infrastructure 
• Break down silos; unite around shared goals and teamwork
• Execute with a sense of urgency and accountability
• Stick with it; change from a culture of effort to a culture of results 

Transparency is critical

• Improvement is not likely to occur if you’re unwilling to face discomforting information
• Avoid explaining things away
• Communicate; share successes and failures
• Data and true stories reveal the need and build the will to change 

Healthcare organizations have much to learn from other high-risk, high-reliability industries 

Respect the science of improvement

• Teach the principles, skills and techniques of quality improvement; you need capable leaders with QI expertise
• Apply the knowledge to action-oriented, data-driven improvement
• Recognize the field of health systems improvement as a career path in academic medicine