Pediatric Emergency Medicine Quality of Care: Strategies for Continued Improvement

Pediatric emergency care is conducted primarily outside of academic medical centers. This care is variable among and between pediatric based providers and general emergency medicine physicians. As studies have noted these variations, there has been focus on ways to broadly improve this care and decrease variation in the non-academic community hospital setting. Initial successes have been realized in pediatric emergency preparedness, learning collaboratives and telemedicine. Although these initiatives show promise in building improvements of care for the community pediatric population, the focus towards maintaining and increasing quality in this population requires additional attention. We review current successes and offer perspective for possible future directions.