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 who are so close to our hearts. 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 Julian and Samantha 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 60 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 as a way 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. Reducing hospital length of stay - Hospitals and especially intensive care units are stressful for the patients and their families. By informing the family and the care team of the expected time to removing the breathing tube or transitioning children from the intensive care unit to step-down, we are working across hospitals to shorten their time in the hospital.

2. Timing of newborn heart surgery - Many newborns with congenital heart disease need surgery before they can go home. We are working to discover the best time for open-heart surgery in newborns.

3. 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.

4. Reducing pain and anxiety in children after open-heart surgery - Pain and anxiety are under recognized and under treated. This can impact later brain development for infants and young children. Our goal is to discover the best ways to recognize and address with a focus on therapies other than medications.

5. 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 $20,000. A single donor can be recognized on the PC4 website, in abstract presentations and in published manuscript.

Visit our website: PC4quality.org

Follow us on Twitter: @pc4quality

Direct contact: Sarah.Tabbutt@UCSF.edu

Executive Director, PC4

*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 the 60 member hospitals of PC4, but gifts will be receipted and acknowledged by the Regents of the University of Michigan. To view a list of participating PC4 hospitals, please click here.