Texas Children's Hospital to speak on importance of outcomes and transparency at National Pediatric Innovation Summit

HOUSTON, Sept. 27, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On Sept. 27 the director of the Texas Children's Outcome and Impact Services will speak on a Patient Empowerment panel at the first annual National Pediatric Innovation Summit sponsored by Boston Children's Hospital. Giving families the tools they need to be empowered patients has been a focus for Texas Children's Hospital for several years. 

The conference, titled Taking on Tomorrow: A National Pediatric Innovation Summit and Awards 2013, will bring together top thought leaders in health care, industry, private equity and science to network, explore collaborations and tackle unsolved challenges in pediatrics. Key areas of focus include autism, genomics, patient/family empowerment and innovation acceleration. 

In a panel session titled, "It's your health – why aren't you in charge," Kathleen Carberry, RN, MPH at Texas Children's Hospital and director of the Outcomes and Impact Service, will speak to a national audience about the importance of outcomes and transparency and engaging with families to help them understand the information they are finding and what questions to be asking when seeking care. She will walk through a new innovative program that Texas Children's Hospital has developed to track, analyze and report the outcomes of many procedures at the hospital, patient by patient.  The program is a nexus of data, informatics, clinical expertise and compassion.  She will also share some of the practical challenges to developing such a program.

"Patients and families deserve the most complete and accurate information possible about an institution's performance," said Carberry.  "As a hospital system, we believe that a critical component of offering outstanding clinical programs is tracking the results of the care delivered through them and making that information accessible."

The Outcomes and Impact Service team is comprised of outcomes nurses dedicated to different clinical specialties, computer programmers, data architects and specialists, and a statistician who works closely with clinical and administrative teams to measure, improve and share the outcomes. The goals of the team are to track and improve clinical outcomes, to understand the impact of those outcomes on the lives of patients and families over time and, most importantly, to make outcomes data available in a form accessible by the general public.  Additionally, a key focus for the team is to partner with patients and families in understanding outcomes data and to help patients and families know what questions to ask when seeking medical treatment.

 The two-day summit on Sept. 26-27 features the following panel topics:

• Piecing Together the Autism Puzzle
• Innovation Acceleration: How Do We Close the Gap from Discovery to Treatment?
• Genomics: The $1,000 Sequence—Now What?
• CEOs Addressing The Top 3 Challenges in Pediatric Care and Care Delivery
• Patient Empowerment: It's Your Health—Why Aren't You in Charge?

For more information on the Outcomes and Impact Service at Texas Children's Hospital, please see: http://www.texaschildrens.org/Outcomes-and-Impact-Service/

For more information on the summit, please visit: http://www.bostonchildrensinnovationsummit.org/

About Texas Children's Hospital
Texas Children's Hospital, a not-for-profit organization, is committed to creating a community of healthy children through excellence in patient care, education and research. Consistently ranked among the top children's hospitals in the nation, Texas Children's has recognized Centers of Excellence in multiple pediatric subspecialties including the Cancer and Heart Centers, and operates the largest primary pediatric care network in the country. Texas Children's is completing a $1.5 billion expansion, which includes the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute; Texas Children's Pavilion for Women, a comprehensive obstetrics/gynecology facility focusing on high-risk births; and Texas Children's Hospital West Campus, a community hospital in suburban West Houston.  For more information on Texas Children's, go to www.texaschildrens.org. Get the latest news from Texas Children's by visiting the online newsroom and on Twitter at twitter.com/texaschildrens.

Contact: Christy Brunton
832-824-2645
[email protected]

SOURCE Texas Children's Hospital