As part of a longstanding commitment to ensuring that patients and families have up-to-the-minute data when choosing among pediatric cardiovascular surgery centers, The Heart Program at Miami Children’s Hospital (MCH) has linked its cardiac surgical outcomes data with the hospital’s new electronic medical record and the CardioAccess Centripitus database and dynamically linked these results to the hospital’s website in real-time. The outcomes data is automatically updated with every case performed. This continues a commitment to real-time outcomes data transparency first implemented on the surgical program’s website in 2002.  Following the transition to the new MCH medical record system, the program’s outcomes are once again made instantly available on the hospital website.
 
“We want to empower parents with the real-time, accurate and accessible information they need to make a confident decision about where to seek cardiac care. It is our commitment to the families who entrust us with their child’s open-heart surgery and subsequent lifelong care,” said Dr. Redmond P. Burke, Director of Cardiovascular Surgery at MCH. “To our knowledge, no other pediatric cardiovascular surgery program in the world makes congenital heart surgical results available online directly from their database. The transparency, accessibility, immediacy and inherent honesty of this approach is unique," he said. 
  
The database, which organizes the information by age, operation and risk category, reports to the Society of Thoracic Surgeons Congenital Heart Surgery Database and to the State of Florida Children’s Medical Services Cardiac Subcommittee. The data is updated continuously.  
 
“CardioAccess is pleased to be a part of this important step in providing real-time outcomes to the public using information from our new web-based software Centripetus,” said Owen White, Senior Project Manager at CardioAccess. “This is the first time any program has made their results available to the public and in real time using the same software utilized for national reporting, allowing the families to make educated decisions as it relates to their healthcare options,”  he said.  
 

“Real-time outcomes is an integral part of the Miami Children’s Hospital Heart Program commitment to quality improvement, public transparency, and life-long care of patients with congenital heart disease and their families,” said Dr. John Rhodes, Director of Pediatric Cardiology Services.

 
The Heart Program at MCH is listed among the nation's top programs for pediatric cardiology and heart surgery in the 2013-14 U.S. News and World Report “Best Children’s Hospital’s” rankings. No other program in Florida ranks higher. MCH is one of more than 100 North American pediatric heart centers that report procedures to a national registry, which provides benchmarking and quality improvement to participating centers. These clinical outcomes for congenital heart surgery can be accessed by visiting: http://www.pediatricheartsurgery.com/realtimeoutcomes/cvperformance.aspx