Children receive vastly more health care in the outpatient than inpatient setting. For every single inpatient visit, an estimated 28 outpatient visits occur.

Serious harm can happen in either setting, and preliminary data suggests that the outpatient setting may be even more complex and error prone than the inpatient environment. The network is focusing on three areas: Ambulatory Foundations, Ambulatory CLABSI, and Ambulatory Incubator. SPS has only begun their initial work into reducing harm in the Ambulatory setting. As tools and resources are developed from the network’s testing, they will be published here for public use.

Ambulatory SharePoint

For network members only

Ambulatory Foundations

The SPS network has established an Ambulatory Safety Foundation in children’s hospitals that will allow for the longitudinal reduction in harm. In addition, SPS will work closely with patients and families to develop and test interventions. The aim of the Ambulatory Safety Foundation’s work is to establish the structure for the development of foundational elements needed for network hospitals to address harm in the ambulatory setting.

Ambulatory CLABSI

SPS’s Ambulatory Central-line Associated Blood Stream Infections (CLABSI) work aims to support the detection and reduction of Ambulatory CLABSI by applying available knowledge in the network and to test factors using the SPS pioneer methodology to help develop an evidence-based bundle of best practices to reduce ambulatory CLABSI. The testing cohort is designed to address Ambulatory CLABSI and will target primarily Ambulatory Hematology-Oncology (Hem-Onc) and Intestinal Failure patient populations (e.g. patients on parental nutrition).

Ambulatory Incubator

The SPS Ambulatory Incubator process supports the work of small teams (Incubators) of interested, cross-network improvers collaborating and learning to identify, explore, and develop quality improvement work to decrease serious ambulatory harms for both employees/staff and patients. As the work progresses, these small teams will submit proposals for ways to decrease harm in the ambulatory setting.