Ochsner Children’s Hospital Quality and Safety

Mom holding up little boy and smiling in the park

At Ochsner Children's Hospital, we understand how much trust families put in us to look after their children. We take this trust seriously and work hard every day to make sure we offer the safest and best care possible. Our whole team is committed to doing what's best for kids.

Our goal is to make a difference and ensure that each child receives excellent care from us. It’s important for us to lead by example, and we're constantly looking for better solutions and giving our all. We’re here to make a positive impact, now and in the future. This dedication to quality and safety is part of the daily work of everyone who cares for children at Ochsner.

Diego Lara, MD, MPH

Dr. Diego Lara has been chief quality officer for Ochsner Children’s Hospital since 2021. He also practices fetal cardiology and pediatric cardiology at Ochsner Health. He received his medical degree in 2008 from Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans. He went on to complete his internship and residency at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He completed his fellowship in pediatric and fetal cardiology at Baylor College of Medicine/Texas Children's Hospital.

We are proud to participate in the following national and international organizations and database registries. These organizations are at the forefront of improvement science for general pediatric care and the many subspecialties available at Ochsner Children’s Hospital.

Pediatric Quality and Safety

Neonatology

Vermont Oxford Network

Pediatric Hematology and Oncology

Children’s Oncology Group Cancer Registry

Pediatric Gastroenterology

Pediatric General Surgery

Pediatric Cardiology

Pediatric Critical Care

Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Consortium (PC⁴)

Pediatric Cardiovascular Surgery

Society of Thoracic Surgery

Neurosurgery and Otolaryngology

National Surgical Quality Improvement Program

Pediatric Orthopedics

Setting Scoliosis Straight

Pediatric Infectious Diseases

Safety

We track specific outcomes to determine the safety of our care.

2023 hand hygiene compliance was 94.50%.

Hand hygiene is the best way to prevent infection in the hospital, so we follow our compliance (the percent of time we clean our hands) closely.

Our goal is to have more than 95% hand hygiene compliance.

We have secret shoppers in each pediatric unit to anonymously capture this data. We review this data monthly and work with each unit to continuously improve our compliance rate.

2023 CLABSI rate was 0.70 events per 1000 central line days.

A CLABSI is an infection in a special intravenous line (or tube) placed into a patient’s vein to help the medical team give medications or fluids. Because this is a direct route to the patient’s blood, it can easily spread infection if it is not carefully cleaned and monitored. The CLABSI rate is the number of infections per 1,000 catheter line days.

We follow national recommendations to help reduce our CLABSI rate. Members of the Pediatric Quality and Safety Team monitor how closely we follow these recommendations and look closely at each infection. Our goal is to use this data to drive our rate as close to zero as possible.

2023 cardiothoracic surgical site infection rate was 0.87 per 100 surgeries.

2023 orthopedic surgical site infection rate for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis for was 0 per 100 surgeries.

A surgical site infection is an infection of a surgical wound that may occur within 30 to 60 days following surgery. They are rare, but important infections. At Ochsner Children’s Hospital, we are working continuously to prevent these types of infections.