Call for evidence: Outcome measures for acute paediatric
services
Background
The RCPCH’s Facing the Future series of work has been successful at building consensus over the
recommended service standards for acute paediatrics. The standards were developed in the
absence of a strong evidence base, and were instead founded upon expert opinion. Currently,
robust evidence of successful outcomes resulting from service change is lacking, so we are unable
to say for certain that service interventions are having a positive or negative effect.
Building on the Facing the Future standards and the audit of these standards published in 2013,
there is a need to establish a set of agreed outcome measures that can be used to benchmark
services and to monitor the effect of service change. To this end, the College has launched a
project to reach consensus agreement regarding 5-10 universally applicable and practically
measureable outcome measures for acute paediatric services that can be used to indicate changes
in the quality of care as a result of service change. It is intended that these outcome measures will
be relevant to clinicians, children and young people and their carers and commissioners alike.
The scope of this project is acute general paediatrics in the UK, including children and young people
up to the age of 18. It does not include children and young people seen in outpatients or by
specialist services.
For the purposes of this project, an acute general paediatric admission is defined as an admission
to the paediatric department or the paediatric assessment unit and not attendance at the emergency
department.
The College intends to publish its final report in summer 2015, which will:
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Provide a list of measures and the evidence base and rationale for their selection, with a
proposed data source for each measure.
Provide a process by which units can collect and monitor their own outcomes.
Enable the College to re-audit Facing the Future standards against outcome measures and
provide benchmarking in order to drive service improvement.
Evidence from a literature search and this call for evidence will be reviewed by our expert reference
group before being short-listed for a feasibility study and pilot. If there is a lack of strong evidence
base, selection will be based on consensus opinion.
How to take part
As part of the evidence gathering stage of this project, we invite you to contribute to our call for
evidence by answering the questions below.
Please return your completed form to outcomes@rcpch.ac.uk. The deadline for responses is 5pm
on Friday 7th November.
If you have any questions please contact Rachel Winch on 0207 0926156, or email
outcomes@rcpch.ac.uk.
RCPCH call for evidence: Outcome measures for acute paediatrics
October 2014
Questions
1. Your details:
Name
Job title
Organisation
Email
2. What outcome measures would you currently look for to help you assess the quality of care in
an acute paediatric service?
We do not require you to provide data at this stage.
3. What other outcome measures are you aware of that you think should be considered?
If possible, please provide references to published documents.
4. What level and type evidence would you consider sufficient to support the use of an outcome
measure to indicate quality of service?
For example, validated outcome measure cited in peer reviewed journal, agreement by
consensus, already in established use, etc.
RCPCH call for evidence: Outcome measures for acute paediatrics
October 2014
5. Would you be willing for your organisation to take part in a pilot study to assess the feasibility of
collecting the shortlisted outcome measures?
☐Yes
☐No
☐Not applicable (do not run an acute paediatric service)
6. Any additional comments or evidence that may be helpful or relevant to this project.
RCPCH call for evidence: Outcome measures for acute paediatrics
October 2014