Children’s Hospital Recognized for Health Literacy

 9300 Valley Children's Place
Madera, California 93638-8762
T: 559.353.3000
F: 559.353.7170
  www.childrenscentralcal.org

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Children’s Hospital Recognized for Health Literacy

Children’s Hospital Central California has been recognized at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s National Forum for working to improve health literacy and patient safety.

Children’s Hospital’s initiative, “Mind the Gap: A Health Literacy Initiative Aimed at Improving Patient Safety,” enhanced patient safety by improving communication provided to patients during the discharge process. Research shows that approximately 80% of patients forget their healthcare provider's instructions as soon as they leave the hospital. In addition, Children's Hospital serves a growing diverse population of patients, many of whom don't speak English. The program sought to address this by providing patient families an additional means of accessing the information from home. Children’s Hospital created a telephone line which provided patients with a recording of their discharge instructions, accessible to them via a password-protected mailbox for two weeks after discharge.  The study enrolled patients who spoke Spanish, Hmong and Mixteco-Bajo and were discharged from Day Surgery or a selected acute care unit.  The project was funded by a $25,000 grant from Cardinal Health.

Children's Hospital was awarded the "Service Quality Award" for Health Equity at the IHI National Forum for a poster about the initiative, and was invited to publish the research in The Permanente Journal.  An interdisciplinary team reviewed 400 posters as part of the process and selected for recognition only twelve that showed a particular emphasis on patient-centeredness and direct service benefit to patients

 
About Children’s Hospital

We are a not-for-profit, state-of-the-art children’s hospital on a 50-acre campus. In California, we treat more inpatient cases than any pediatric hospital north of San Diego, making us the second largest children’s hospital in the state. Our 338-bed facility is one of the 10 largest hospitals of its type in the nation.

We received Magnet Nursing designation in 2004 and redesignation in 2008. We are the first children's hospital west of the Rockies to receive Magnet Nursing designation, the highest nursing benchmark in the world. We are accredited by the Joint Commission and we are proud to have been recognized by the LeapFrog Group with an award for Excellence in Patient Safety and Health Care Quality.

We perform more than 9,000 pediatric surgeries a year and our Pediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care Units have some of the lowest mortality rates in the country while treating some of the sickest kids.

Our Craycroft Cancer Center is a full member of the nationally-recognized Children’s Oncology Group (COG), and sees more than 100 new cases a year. Our Willson Heart Center has pioneered pediatric heart care for half a century.

We are the premier pediatric medical center in the heart of the Golden State. We are Children’s Hospital Central California – Amazing People, Incredible Care.

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