• Hamilton P Schwartz, Michael T Bigham, Pamela J Schoettker, Keith Meyer, Michael S Trautman, Robert M Insoft, and American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Transport Medicine.
• 1Division of Emergency Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Cincinnati Children's Hospital, University of Cincinnati School of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH. 2Division of Critical Care Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Akron Children's Hospital, Northeast Ohio Medical University, Akron, OH. 3James M. Anderson Center for Health Systems Excellence, Cincinnati Children's Hospital, Cincinnati, OH. 4Division of Critical Care Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Miami Children's Hospital, Miami, FL. 5Division of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics, James W. Riley Hospital for Children, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN. 6Department of Pediatrics, Brown University Alpert School of Medicine, Providence, RI.
• Pediatr Crit Care Me. 2015 Oct 1; 16 (8): 711-7.

ObjectivesThe transport of neonatal and pediatric patients to tertiary care facilities for specialized care demands monitoring the quality of care delivered during transport and its impact on patient outcomes. In 2011, pediatric transport teams in Ohio met to identify quality indicators permitting comparisons among programs. However, no set of national consensus quality metrics exists for benchmarking transport teams. The aim of this project was to achieve national consensus on appropriate neonatal and pediatric transport quality metrics.DesignModified Delphi technique.SettingThe first round of consensus determination was via electronic mail survey, followed by rounds of consensus determination in-person at the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Transport Medicine's 2012 Quality Metrics Summit.SubjectsAll attendees of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Transport Medicine Quality Metrics Summit, conducted on October 21-23, 2012, in New Orleans, LA, were eligible to participate.Measurements And Main ResultsCandidate quality metrics were identified through literature review and those metrics currently tracked by participating programs. Participants were asked in a series of rounds to identify "very important" quality metrics for transport. It was determined a priori that consensus on a metric's importance was achieved when at least 70% of respondents were in agreement. This is consistent with other Delphi studies. Eighty-two candidate metrics were considered initially. Ultimately, 12 metrics achieved consensus as "very important" to transport. These include metrics related to airway management, team mobilization time, patient and crew injuries, and adverse patient care events. Definitions were assigned to the 12 metrics to facilitate uniform data tracking among programs.ConclusionsThe authors succeeded in achieving consensus among a diverse group of national transport experts on 12 core neonatal and pediatric transport quality metrics. We propose that transport teams across the country use these metrics to benchmark and guide their quality improvement activities.

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