Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Consortium

The Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Consortium (PC⁴), started in 2013, just five hospitals with a grant from the National Institutes of Health who wanted to save lives and improve outcomes in these children with critical heart disease. Seven years later we are growing, expanding, learning, and making a real difference for families needing a miracle.

Congenital heart disease impacts 1 in 100 children born each year, and most of them need open-heart surgery and a stay in the intensive care unit to survive. Monitors, machines and alarms in the intensive care unit cause significant stress for both the patient and their parents. Please view the stories of Samantha and Julian who were diagnosed before birth with congenital heart disease requiring open-heart surgery while newborns.

PC⁴ exists to improve outcomes for children with critical heart disease. With over 75 intensive care units across North America, we have demonstrated that we can save lives and reduce the rate of cardiac arrest. PC⁴ hospitals believe in collaborative learning to improve the care of patients and families fighting critical cardiovascular disease. This includes sharing best practices, promoting teamwork, working together on innovative projects, and communicating important findings across hospitals. Passion for these children so close to our heart drives our mission to give them the best possible care.

You can help to save lives and improve outcomes for children with congenital heart disease. Please consider a non-specific donation to the PC⁴ collaborative OR contributing to a specific ongoing or upcoming PC⁴ projects:

1. Unexpected interventions on the heart after open-heart surgery - Following open-heart surgery, 1 in 10 patients undergoes a second unplanned heart surgery or heart catheter intervention, and in newborns this occurs in 1 in 5 patients. Our goal is to predict and potentially avoid these unplanned procedures.
2. Premature babies with congenital heart disease.  What is the best time for surgery?  How to best support these fragile babies to optimize nutrition, parental bonding and minimize painful procedures.
3. Equalizing outcomes across race and ethnicity - Health disparities are an unacceptable reality in medicine. Important outcomes like survival are not equal across race and ethnicity. This is true for children with critical heart disease. Our goal is to enable centers to compare their outcomes to other centers and by identifying high performing centers, help to equalize outcomes for all patients.

All contributions are welcome. Please specify, if interested in supporting a specific quality initiative.

Each quality improvement project listed above requires approximately $15,000. A single donor can be recognized on the PC⁴ website, in abstract presentations and in published manuscripts.

Visit our website: PC4quality.org

Follow us on Twitter: @pc4quality

Direct contact: Sarah.Tabbutt@UCSF.edu

Executive Director, PC⁴

To view a list of participating PC⁴ hospitals, please click here .

*This campaign is being facilitated by the University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, a member of the Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Consortium (PC⁴). All proceeds will solely benefit projects and needs of PC⁴, but gifts will be receipted and acknowledged by the Regents of the University of Michigan.