Things are cooking at Cook's

As a kind of warmup to this week's IHI Annual National Forum, I am currently at the Annual Meeting and Quality Congress of the Vermont Oxford Network, a group of over 1000 neonatal doctors and other professionals who gather together to share stories of patient care advancement.  I was asked to give a keynote address, but as usual, I learned more than I imparted.  Here is a great story told by Tammy Hoff, RN, from Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas (seen here with BIDMC's John Zupancic).  They made a concerted effort to reduce the rate of central line infections in their level III-C NICU (750 admissions per year, average census 55).  They used methods from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and Pediatrix medical group and have been a rate of zero for many months.  Here are the key slides:

What were the costs to the hospital?

Tammy noted:

In order to establish the line team, we had to give up two nursing positions.

Since the establishment of this team and with the success of the program, we have since been able to get those two nursing positions back and filled.

The overall greatest expense in this process is in the risk of taking the first step:  To hire a dedicated team that can focus on nothing but infections and the development of best practice.

Since the inception of this team an expense, but one that we are willing to accept, is the travel to different conferences and programs around the country to share out story.

Here are the benefits, more generally, for society, using Peter Pronovost's CLABSI Opportunity Estimator tool: