New SCAI-QIT Toolkit Guides Pediatric CCL Quality Improvement

May 28, 2014—The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI) announced that a new resource was unveiled at the SCAI 2014 scientific sessions in Las Vegas, Nevada, that is intended to improve care for children with congenital heart disease in pediatric cardiac catheterization laboratories (CCLs). The Pediatric SCAI Quality Improvement Toolkit (Pediatric SCAI-QIT) is an extension of the SCAI-QIT program for CCLs. With an estimated 1 in 110 babies born with a congenital heart disease, the rapidly evolving advancements in interventional cardiology treatments are driving the need for quality tools specific to pediatric patients.

Henri Justino, MD, serves as Chair of Pediatric SCAI-QIT. Dr. Justino is also Director of the CE Mullins Cardiac Catheterization Laboratories at Texas Children’s Hospital and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. In the SCAI press release, Dr. Justino commented, “Children are not simply small adults. Just as pediatric care requires a dedicated approach, pediatric quality improvement requires specific tools and resources tailored to the unique medical needs of children.”

According to the society, the Pediatric SCAI-QIT includes four modules: Procedural Quality, Catheterization Conferences, Procedural Checklists, and Radiation Safety. Each module provides a specific and detailed bibliography of resources on pediatric care, numerous web links for easy access to online resources, information on and access to registries, and benchmarking information.

Kalyani Trivedi, MD, is Cochair of Pediatric SCAI-QIT and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Chicago in Illinois. In the SCAI press release, Dr. Trivedi commented, “Consistently evaluating quality of care and striving to do better is at the core of interventional cardiology. The Pediatric SCAI-QIT is the latest effort to ensure physicians and cath lab staff have the tools and resources they need to provide the highest quality of care to patients.”

The society first introduced the SCAI-QIT in 2011 and features regularly updated sections on continuous quality improvement, accreditation, third-party peer review, measurement, public reporting, and patient and physician education. The toolkit will be continuously updated by a team of physician authors to ensure the latest quality standards are included, with additional modules expected to capture the growth of the field. The goal of each module is to stimulate thought and generate action from all team members within each CCL in order to positively affect patient outcomes, stated SCAI.