Quality & Safety

Looking at these outcomes of care helps us celebrate our successes—but more importantly, it helps us identify areas where we need to focus our efforts to improve the care we deliver.

OSF HealthCare Children’s Hospital of Illinois is committed to improving care for our patients; we regularly measure and examine the quality and safety of our care so that we can keep working to improve the services we provide to our patients and families.

Pediatric medication safety, prevention of falls, security of pediatric inpatients, reducing hospital-acquired infections, and identifying early warning signs of critical illness are a few examples of the ongoing quality and safety work at Children’s Hospital of Illinois.

Despite these ongoing improvements in the outcomes and experiences of our patients and families, we know that the journey toward perfect care is never over; Children’s Hospital of Illinois continues to work on the efficiency and reliability of our care processes. In addition to working with national and international groups that are on the same journey of improving the safety and quality of care and following recommendations and care guidelines supported by organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and The Joint Commission, one of the most important ways we learn about the quality, safety, and efficiency of our care is through the feedback we get from our patients and their families. We use all of this information to transform the way we deliver care, from the board room to the bedside.

Clinical Indicators

Quality is measured in many different ways. While there are not many pediatric measures that are required to be publicly reported, the links below will give you basic information and some comparisons on quality measures.

Keeping Our Patients Safe

At OSF HealthCare Children's Hospital of Illinois, safety is our top priority. We monitor several key measures to ensure we're providing the safest, highest quality care to every patient. We share these results because we believe families should have clear information about how we're doing and areas where we're working to improve. Here are a few examples and explanations:

Children's Hospital of Illinois Quality Data – Fiscal Year 2025
Central Line Associated Blood Stream Infections (CLABSI) Rate per 1000 central line or central venous catheter days	0.618
Catheter Associated Urinary Track Infections (CAUTI) Rate	0.000
Adverse Drug Events Rate	0.000
Falls with Injury Rate	0.000

CLABSI (Central Line Associated Blood Stream Infection)

Some children need a special IV called a central line to get medicine or nutrition. Because it goes into a big blood vessel, it's important to keep the central line very clean. If germs get into the IV line, it can cause a serious infection in the blood called a CLABSI. At OSF Children’s Hospital, we only use these lines when we absolutely need to, and we follow special cleaning and care practices to prevent these infections.
The goal is to be at less than 1, which refers to the number of infections for every day a line is in place out of 1,000 days. The lower the number the better.
Our number is 0.6, so we are performing better than the goal.

CAUTI (Catheter Associated Urinary Tract Infection)

Sometimes children need a tube (catheter) in their bladder while they are sick. If germs get into the bladder through this tube, it can cause an infection (called a CAUTI). At OSF Children’s Hospital we use these catheters only when we need to, and we follow special cleaning and care practices to prevent infection.
The goal is to be below 1 each year. Lower numbers are better.
Our rate is 0 (no CAUTI infections) for more than 2 years.

ADE (Adverse Drug Events)

Adverse drug events are harm related to a child's medication such as a bad reaction, a dosing error or a side effect. We track these so we can catch problems early, learn from them, and ensure medication use is as safe as possible.
Lower numbers are better
Our rate of serious adverse drug events (ADEs) is 0 (none in the last year).

Falls with Injury

Just like children can fall at home, they can sometimes fall when they're in the hospital. At OSF Children’s Hospital, our goal is to prevent falls and especially falls that cause injury.
Lower numbers are better
Our current rate is 0 (zero falls in the last year).

Hand Hygiene

We know clean hands save lives. Hand hygiene refers to how often our staff clean or sanitize their hands at the right times - before and after touching a patient or equipment. We use "secret shoppers" to observe and record this frequently on every unit because it's one of the simplest and most important ways to prevent infections. Our goal is 95% compliance or higher with current hand hygiene practices across OSF Children’s Hospital. Tracking our performance helps us to focus our efforts on always striving to be our best.

We track performance each month. For December 2025, five out of six inpatient units met the goal with scores over 95%. The sixth unit was at 94%.