VPS has expanded its QI efforts in several areas:

• VPS Collaborative QI Projects

Initiated in 2022 and ongoing:

Quality Improvement Nutrition Collaborative
The VPS-facilitated project enables data from the VPS Nutrition Module with results from the AHRQ funded Pediatric Measurement Center of Excellence (PMCoE) including the Quality Metrics developed by the PICU Expert Work Group. The PMCoE was part of the AHRQ Pediatric Quality Measures Program (for more information click here). Please consider adding the nutrition fields to your VPS Data Collection Profile to obtain baseline and comparative information for your PICU’s nutrition metrics.

Initiated in 2024 and ongoing:

Quality Improvement Respiratory Management Collaborative
Using the VPS data elements, VPS partners with PICUs in a QI Collaborative to provide an opportunity to work alongside other PICU teams to conduct PDSA cycles on selected bundle to improve the care in the PICU. The purpose of this program is to improve respiratory management support and clinical outcomes in participating PICUs.
Goals of Collaborative:
•Increase efficiency, timeliness and effectiveness for successful extubations.
•Decrease duration of mechanical ventilation.
•Reduce extubation failures.
•Reduce unplanned extubations.
•Reduce incidences of ventilator acquired pneumonia.

Quality Improvement Patient Flow Collaborative
Using the VPS data elements, VPS partners with PICUs in a QI Collaborative to provide an opportunity to work alongside other PICU teams to conduct PDSA cycles on selected bundle to improve the care in the PICU. The purpose of this program is to improve patient flow support and clinical outcomes in participating PICUs.
Goals of Collaborative:
• Improve patient flow
• Reduction of Discharge/Transfer Delay
• Reduction of Length of Stay
• Reduction of unplanned readmissions
• Increase efficiency in admitting patients to the ICU
• Reduction of inappropriate admission to the ICU

VPS plans to add more QI collaboratives this year.  Please email helpdesk@myvps.org if your hospital is interested in joining us with one of our future endeavors.

• QI Training: VPS hosted a 40-minute webinar, “Quality Basics – Tools and Definitions”. This webinar introduced the basics of quality improvement. It highlighted key terminology, the steps required for the QI process, and the tools used for pursuing QI initiatives (click here to view the presentation).