Pediatric Quality, Safety, and Patient Experience

Pediatric Institute Serious Safety Events

A serious safety event occurs when we deviate from generally accepted performance standards (either not doing something we should have or doing something that shouldn't have been done) and cause significant patient harm (death, moderate, or severe permanent harm or significant temporary harm).

Pediatric Serious Safety Events

2011 - 2020

The Y-axis on this graph represents serious safety events and the X-axis represents time. Each bar represents the total number of serious safety events that occurred in a given quarter¹.

¹In 2020, Cleveland Clinic Children's saw over 50,000 outpatient visits and over 10,000 inpatient admissions.

Four Quarter Moving Average

2011 - 2021

A moving average is a technique to get an overall idea of trends in a data set. Each point on this graph is the average of the four preceding quarters.

Our goal is zero harm

Having a common set of error prevention tools and incorporating situational awareness into our everyday operations has helped us come this far. We are continually working to inculcate high reliability principles into all our operations to achieve our goal of zero harm.

What are we doing to improve?

  • Family Activated PMET (2008)
  • Family Centered Rounds (2008)
  • Safety Rounds (2008)
  • Ohio Children’s Hospitals Solutions for Patient Safety (2009)
  • 24/7 Pediatric Pharmacist (2010)
  • All Caregivers - Error Prevention Training (2011)
  • Resident Curriculum in Safety (2011)
  • Daily Safety Briefing (2012)
  • Family Engagement Team/Healthcare Partners (2012)
  • Medication Barcode Technology (2013)
  • Escalation of Care guidelines developed (2013)
  • Family Engagement Team/ Healthcare Partners (2014)
  • Implementation of Smart Syringe Pumps (2014)
  • VAST Team established (2015)
  • Situational Awareness (2015)
  • Bedside HAC huddles (2016)
  • Preventing CLABSI - Protecting Our Children (2017)
  • “What a Catch” Program (2019)
  • Situational Awareness Vital Electronic Scout-SAVES (2019)
  • Speak Up for Safety (2019)
  • Code Cart Standardization (2020)
  • Individualized Behavioral Health Plan (2020)