News Briefs
Accreditation and Certification Update
Drs. Robert Cooper and Darla Gallantine are heading up a task force considering the certification and accreditation of pediatric urgent care facilities. At this year’s Leadership Summit in Atlanta they presented preliminary thoughts on how SPUC would create and implement these processes.
Certification would be a confirmation that a facility provides appropriate pediatric urgent care, but would be less comprehensive than a full accreditation. A site survey would not always be required, would be less expensive and would survey for basic pediatric parameters. Among requirements for certification would be clear signage regarding care of children, hours of operation, protocols in pace for children in distress. Other possible criteria might include on site phlebotomy and x-ray, pediatric rescue (“crash”) cart and established transfer protocols.
The medical director or at least one provider must be a member of SPUC, at least one provider trained in pediatrics would be on site at all times when facility open.
Accreditation would be a more rigorous process with all of the above criteria met as well as Boarded pediatric providers, open seven days a week, coordination with Medical Home, PALS training and BLS training for all staff, quality and safety programs in place. An onsite would be part of the review process so that the physical environment and equipment requirements can be inspected.
Questions which the task force will need to answer as they put the process together include:
- Can full service urgent Cares that see adults as well as children seek certification.
- How will this Credential compare/compete with Joint Commission accreditation.
- Who will be the accrediting body, i.e. should there be a separate arm of SPUC?
Urgent Care OUCH Database
The Society of Pediatric Urgent Care and the Subcommittee of Urgent Care (under the Section of Emergency Medicine of the AAP) have elected Dr. Montalbano to lead research efforts in these two collaborative organizations. She is currently collecting data from a pilot survey to establish the Organization of Urgent Care Health (OUCH) Database. The pilot survey includes administrative data that will help establish national standards, benchmarks, and scope of care for pediatric urgent care centers. This data was presented at the Pediatric Clinical Research Network SIG meeting at the Academic Pediatric Societies annual meeting in Baltimore. We received helpful feedback from the group about further direction moving forward as well as lessons learned from other networks like CORNET, PRIS, and BORN.
Do you have data to contribute to this database? See the email from Dr. Montalbano below!
Hello Pediatric Urgent Care Provider,
We would like to invite you to participate in the first national survey of pediatric urgent care centers. We are hoping to reach administrators, medical directors, and division leaders to complete this short, but rather comprehensive survey about the daily operation of your pediatric urgent care center. We ask that if you are unable to answer these questions regarding salaries, staffing, and scope - please forward this link to someone in your center who may be able to complete the survey.
The survey has been deemed non-human subjects by the IRB at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, MO. This survey is completely voluntary. The results of the survey will be disclosed at the PUCC conference in New York in June 2016. We hope to publish the results to reach a larger audience as well. We encourage you to be complete in your answers as the more information we collect, the more information we can supply you!
There are a few metrics that will likely require some data collection. Feel free to save your work and return to the survey when you have the metrics data. If you have questions regarding the survey, feel free to contact me using the information below.
*** You may save your work and return to the survey, but you must record the "return code" prior to closing the survey to be able to retrieve your completed work. ***
Click on the link to participate. If the hyperlink does not open, please copy and paste the link into your browser window.
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__cmhredcap.cmh.edu_surveys_-3Fs-3DR8CNJRKFJE&d=CwIFAw&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=oTuClpJQ4ptZpJYRh9UoYx1h
2Ibuco0cNS6hU31P5Yw&m=0709hOdQlUBobWVtVU_r5zGk_8xuGpoBfWbf5d93PmI&s=vGVyG971Jpqe 9or_Soz57h74eX51PxA3loVs9ODGsM&e=
Thanks again,
Amanda
Amanda Montalbano, MD, MPH, FAAP
