Harnessing a neonatal encephalopathy registry for regional quality improvement efforts.

OBJECTIVE

Improve regional clinical care for infants with neonatal encephalopathy presumed to be due to hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) by developing a clinical data registry.

STUDY

DESIGN

We developed a regional multicenter registry of newborns at risk for HIE and leveraged data collected within the registry to design and monitor biannually quality improvement metrics in a collaborative effort among site investigators.

RESULT: Over the 3 years since beginning our improvement efforts, we have demonstrated positive trends in all three initial metrics decided on by our investigators: increasing the cord blood gas acquisition in high-risk deliveries (median 74-87%); increasing neurological exam and encephalopathy score documentation in infants with perinatal acidosis (17-36%); and decreasing the incidence of infants discharged on anti-seizure medication (60-29%).

CONCLUSION

In addition to providing hypothesis-generating research data, local and regional registry data can be successfully utilized for quality improvement efforts across multiple hospitals.