In the spirit of Christ and the example of Francis of Assisi, the Mission of OSF HealthCare is to serve persons with the greatest care and love in a community that celebrates the Gift of Life.
In addition to collaborating with national groups to improve the safety and quality of care, OSF Children’s Hospital has a number of internal teams that work on topics such as medication safety, neonatal care, emergency care and critical care.
OSF HealthCare Children’s Hospital of Illinois has partnered with Illinois Heart Rescue to offer a free bystander, hands-only CPR and AED education program to high school students and staff. Bystander CPR has been proven to double, even triple, the chances of survival of someone in cardiac arrest.
Lauren’s Law requires Illinois high schools to add CPR and AED training to a student’s curriculum once during their four-year education. However, we suggest adding bystander CPR and AED education yearly to a physical education, health education or science curriculum. This would increase a student’s knowledge and ability to perform potential life-saving techniques.
The free presentation consists of a short video, discussion and training on bystander CPR and AED use. We also encourage schools to provide the students with a pre- and post-test to gather data on information learned. The tests are included within this packet. After the training, booths are available for students to visit on various health topics. The training takes one class period of the school’s choice.
We would appreciate the opportunity to partner with you and teach your students and staff the importance of bystander CPR and AED education. If you are interested in scheduling or have questions, please contact us here.
The Congenital Heart Center at OSF Children’s Hospital of Illinois has participated in the CardioAccess Database (part of the Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons since 2007. This database helps us track all of our congenital heart surgery patients internally as well as being able to compare our results with over 100 other centers and over 240,000 surgical procedures.
This information is used to improve the quality of care, and for research and further regional development of the Congenital Heart Center.
The Cystic Fibrosis Center at OSF Children’s Hospital of Illinois participates in Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF) Patient Registry. The CFF Patient Registry tracks the health and treatments of over 27,000 people with cystic fibrosis across the United States. This registry helps cystic fibrosis centers improve care delivery, develop care guidelines, and design trials to test new therapies, as well as study the effects of therapy; the registry also helps compare overall health of patients between centers and find areas where care can be improved to improve the health of patients with cystic fibrosis.
The Cystic Fibrosis Center at the OSF Children’s Hospital of Illinois continues to score above the national average in all age groups for lung function.
The OSF Children’s Hospital of Illinois participates in the Children’s Hospital Association (CHA) General Pediatric Focus Group; this group helps OSF Children’s Hospital compare our outcomes to other children’s hospitals and helps us improve our performance as a result. We continually aim for excellence and these projects allow us to work with the best of the best to achieve improved patient outcomes.
The most recent project is one of easing a child’s transition from a critical care unit to a more traditional inpatient (acute care) unit; the General Pediatric Focus Group is working on family education with printed guidelines and one-on-one conversations with patients and families to help them have a smooth transition of care.
Healthy Kids U partners with children and their families to make healthy lifestyle choices in order to prevent and manage children with obesity-related health problems.
Over the last two years the Neonatal ICU has been working with eight national neonatal centers as part of the Vermont Oxford collaborative to reduce hospital acquired infections. We have developed work processes designed to prevent infections and standardized how we insert, maintain, and remove central venous catheters.
Over the past two years, we have continually reduced our infections, saving patients from needless infections and saving over $1 million in healthcare costs to date.
Our most important collaboration is with our patients and families – we call it Patient & Family Centered Care. By working together, we will can achieve better patient safety, and the best possible outcome for your child.
There are five components to Patient & Family Centered Care:
We promote open and honest sharing of knowledge. Please share any information on your child’s health, including symptoms, treatments, medications and other illnesses.
We recognize that parents are the expert on their child, and consider them to be an integral part of our care team. Together, we can provide children with the very best care.
We respect each family’s unique needs, and will partner together to help healing.
We will provide both structured and informal support to help families cope with the stresses of hospitalization, adjusting to change, and keeping a focus on wellness.
We encourage families to ask questions, partner with us to plan each child’s care, and to let us know if you are not satisfied for any reason.
The OSF Children’s Hospital of Illinois participates in the Children’s Hospital Association (CHA) Pediatric ICU Focus Group and the Pediatric ICU database; within these groups, we have the opportunity to work with other nationally recognized children’s hospitals to improve the quality and safety of our care and to improve outcomes for our patients.
The Pediatric ICU at OSF Children’s Hospital of Illinois has been successful in dramatically reducing hospital-acquired ventilator- and central venous line-related infections due to our participation in these CHA groups and we continue to work to reduce hospital acquired infections and delays in discharge or transfer to other units within the Children’s Hospital.
OSF HealthCare Children’s Hospital of Illinois provides programming to high schools in Central Illinois to educate students about the risks of opioid use and abuse.
The Prescription Drug Safety Program, provided in partnership with EVERFI, is an innovative digital course designed to empower students with the knowledge and skills to make healthy, informed decisions when it comes to prescription medications.