We participate in the Vermont Oxford Network
The goal of the Department of Newborn Medicine is to provide the bet and safest quality of care for every neonate admitted to our neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). To that end, we have purchased membership in the Vermont Oxford Network, an organization of about 450 NICUs on five continents. The purpose of the organization is to improve the quality and safety of medical care for newborns and their families through a coordinated program of research, quality improvement, and education.
Since January 1, 2003, every neonate admitted to rooms A,B,C, and D in our NICU has been logged into the Vermont Oxford Network and followed throughout his or her course with specific attention to diagnoses, treatments, and length of stay. To date, we have collected data on about 850 infants.
Among the parameters that we follow are: aspects of antenatal care; delivery room events; incidence and severity of respiratory distress syndrome; methods of ventilation of these patients; development of chronic lung disease; appearance and treatment of patient ductus arteriosus; incidence and severity of intraventicular hemorrhage; necrotizing enterocolitis; retinopathy of prematurity; early and late sepsis; as well as total length of stay in the hospital. Infants who are transferred to other hospital are followed until their final discharge.
These detailed, de-identified clinical data are submitted to the Network for statistical analysis. The annual report of our benchmarking data, which we will receive in August 2004, will show us how well we compare to other NICUs in the database and will help us to improve our practices in areas that will be beneficial to our patients.
Another aspect of our work is our participation in a series of live, web-based collaborative conferences with 54 other units, focused on improving safety in the NICU. The purpose of these meetings is to learn methods for improving communication and cooperation among all members of the treatment team to effect rapid changes in policies, which make the unit function more safely and efficiently.
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