UK HealthCare

Day Appointed to National Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Expert Work Group

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 18, 2013) - Dr. Scottie Day, director of the Kentucky Children's Hospital Transport and Outreach Program and assistant professor of pediatric critical care in the UK College of  Medicine, has been appointed to a national Expert Work Group charged with developing pediatric quality metrics for the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU).

This Expert Work Group has been charged with developing and/or enhancing measures for the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) that will be proposed for national endorsement by the AHRQ-CMS Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) Pediatric Measurement Center of Excellence (PMCoE). 

"Honestly, it is such a privilege to be selected to work on this project not just as a representative of Kentucky Children's Hospital, but as an advocate for the children of the commonwealth - the place where I grew up and now call home," Day said.

This pediatric-focused project is a broad collaborative effort comprised of the Medical College of Wisconsin, the American Board of Medical Specialties, the American Board of Pediatrics, Northwestern University, Thomson Reuters Healthcare Inc., and the American Academy of Pediatrics. The Pediatric Critical Care Unit is one of three targeted areas for this second year of the multi-year project.  The actual PICU effort is being led by the Medical College of Wisconsin on behalf of PMCoE, and the American Academy of Pediatrics is providing key administrative support.

The long-term goal for this project is to advance and improve children’s healthcare quality measures that make a difference by both informing policy decisions and actual clinical performance in the inpatient and ambulatory settings using proven methodologies to achieve this broad goal.  This proposal has numerous aims.

The PMCoE PICU Expert Work Group will focus primarily on the following:

  • Review of existing measures and supporting data including evidence, gaps, and data for impact
  • Refine existing measures
  • Measure development and enhancement
  • Measure testing and re-evaluation in preparation for national endorsement

The approach used will follow the AMA-Physicians Consortium for Performance Improvement Roadmap for developing quality measures in collaboration with the key project personnel from the eight major national organizations identified above including the AAP.

The PMCoE PICU Expert Work Group will convene for an initial face-to-face meeting on April 8 at AAP headquarters in Elk Grove Village, Ill. The Expert Work Group consists of 21 individuals representing multiple disciplines, including critical care medicine physicians, nurses, family representatives and program leaders. The extensive selection process included efforts to represent diversity and broad-based constituency with considerations for individuals’ experience, quality training, unit and institution size, volume, type, acuity, locations specific to region as well as factors such as metropolitan, suburban, or rural in nature.