Nation's Second Accredited Pediatric Heart Failure Institute is Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children of Wilmington, DE

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The Healthcare Accreditation Colloquium

Aug 26, 2013, 08:45 ET

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Aug. 26, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The Healthcare Accreditation Colloquium announced today that Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, Wilmington, DE became the second Accredited Pediatric Heart Failure Institute in the nation following an in-depth onsite review.

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"We pursued accreditation with the Colloquium as a way to independently assess the quality of our heart failure and related clinical programs," said Sam Gidding, MD, Division Chief of Pediatric Cardiology. "The accreditation process both validated our sense of the quality of our program and gave us many new suggestions to improve our program. We anticipate working with other Colloquium pediatric centers to better standardize and improve pediatric heart failure care across the United States."

Nemours is just the second pediatric hospital to earn the designation of Accredited Pediatric Heart Failure Institute and one of only five Colloquium charter pediatric member hospitals.

The reviewers, David Driscoll, MD (Mayo Clinic Children's Center) and David Wayne (Temple University adjunct faculty) assessed Nemours in four major Domains: Community, Hospital, Clinician, and Science. Within each Domain, Nemours completed various milestones required for accreditation. Within the Community Domain, Nemours was found to have an exceptional support group for children and families with heart failure as well as a proactive outreach program to educate EMS personnel on how to care for these children in emergencies. Within the Hospital Domain, Nemours offered advanced heart failure care including ventricular assist devices and heart transplant.

"Within the Clinician Domain, Nemours leadership is ahead of the crowd in their organizational structure." said David Wayne, lead reviewer. "Nemours functions as an authentic collaborative system with a common purpose, serving their patients. Nemours' use of data for assessment, prediction, and improvement is also unusually strong. Washington leadership would do well to learn more about Nemours' approach to childhood heart disease as our national healthcare model is being debated."

Colloquium member hospitals are expected to contribute to the body of knowledge about childhood heart failure within the Science Domain. Nemours is deeply involved in research at the National Institute of Health (CARDIA Study) as well as other research venues. "We had the sense we were making great progress in pediatric heart failure including advanced care with ventricular assist devices and heart transplant," said Christian Pizarro, MD, Chief of Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgery and Director of the Nemours Cardiac Center. "The Colloquium's approach to collaborative learning will help everyone organize and implement existing knowledge more effectively and quickly than in the past."

The Colloquium is the first organization to develop an improvement science based approach to pediatric heart failure accreditation using a continuum of care model.

To learn more about Nemours:

General info: http://www.nemours.org
Heart care for children info: http://www.nemours.org/service/medical/heartdefects.html

To learn more about the Colloquium:

General info: http://colloquiumhealth.com/contact/
Phone: 614-545-3800

Contact: Tony Joseph, MD
Chief Executive Officer
The Healthcare Accreditation Colloquium
3040 Riverside Drive, Suite 219
Columbus, Ohio 43221
614.545.3800
Email

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SOURCE The Healthcare Accreditation Colloquium