National Paediatric Critical Care Audit

The overarching aim is to stimulate improvements in care for patients by measuring
variations in quality, experience and outcomes. During this contract period, the successful
tenderer will need to build on the achievements of the audit to date and enhance the ability
for the audit to be used for healthcare improvement.
Data is most useful locally for healthcare improvement when its provision to clinical teams is
timely, the data is refreshed regularly and appropriate tools, support and guidance
accompany the data outputs. The intent is for all of these features of the audit to be
implemented and improved during the period of this contract.
This re-commission provides an opportunity to move the audit on from data collection for
healthcare planning and research, to data driven healthcare quality improvement. Tenderers
should propose five clinically important, realistic and measurable (SMART) 3-year
improvement aims.
Tenderers should consider improvement aims from the following areas, but can also propose
aims from other areas:
• Reduce:
o the risk of dying
o unplanned extubation rates
o specialist PCC transport service refusals for urgent transfer
o the number of children transferred to a unit more than two hours (travel by road) away
o the central line infection rate
o the length of stay for children with complex medical needs
o the number of unnecessary cardiac surgery admissions to PCC Level 3
o emergency readmission rates
• Increase the proportion of parents and families who have excellent care experiences (with a
baseline measure)
The audit supplier will work with commissioners, funders, specialised commissioning and
operational delivery networks (ODNs) to create a coherent strategy for how the
improvement goals listed above, or similar, will be achieved.