Supporting High Quality Patient Care

The issue

Improving quality requires measurement, benchmarking, and learning from peers about new and innovative practices. This is a challenge for children’s hospitals in Europe who are often the only providers of complex paediatric healthcare in their region or country. They need pan-European networks to support them in data and knowledge sharing to help improve the healthcare they provide children and young people.

What we do

ECHO has two working groups dedicated to improving quality: Data and Patient Experience.              

Data Working Group

Children's hospitals hold immense amounts of data on patients and on the processes that go into caring for them. Using these data for benchmarking or pooling them to study rare diseases could help improve the health of patients and make delivering care more efficient.

The aim of the Data Working Group is to 1) share information on how data systems are organized and managed and to 2) identify ways to maximize the use of currently available data to improve process and outcome indicators. Additionally, it aims to help hospitals just starting their digitalization journey to get on board faster through networking with colleagues at more advanced hospitals. 

ECHO Data Working Group Leadership: Pekka Khari, Technology Office, HUS (Helsinki and Uusimaa Healthcare District Hospital)

Patient Experience Working Group

Patient, or user, experience is a broad term that includes many factors. It encompasses everything from the built environment of the hospital, to the amount of pain a patient feels during a blood draw, to the experience of siblings. Addressing patient experience is unique in children’s hospitals due to the focus on caring for the whole family and to the wide developmental age of patients.

To help address the challenges of improving the experience of children, young people, and their families, ECHO established the Patient Experience Working Group. The Patient Experience Working Group aims to facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing, support research in the field, and provide mutual inspiration.

ECHO Patient Exerience Working Group Leadership: Joan Vinyet, Head of Patient Experience, Sant Joan de Déu Barcelona Children's Hospital and Ditte Marie Hansen, Mary Elizabeth's Hospital-Rigshospitalet for Children, Teens and Expecting Families 

Projects

VoiCEs Value of including the Children Experience for improving their rights during hospitalization

The project aims to strengthen children’s involvement in evaluation and improvement of pediatric care through the design, implementation, and evaluation of a paediatric Patient-Reported Experience Measures (PREMs). All participating hospitals are ECHO members (Children’s Clinical University Hospital in Latvia, Erasmus MC Sophia Children’s Hospital in the Netherlands, HUS New Children’s Hospital in Finland, and Meyer Children’s Hospital in Italy).