Pediatric Inpatient Rehabilitation Quality and Patient Safety

If your child or patient is dealing with a loss of function in day-to-day activities due to injury or illness, you want them to regain as much of that ability as possible. Our Inpatient Rehabilitation Program provides the best care to help your child along that path. The 12-bed unit has access to all services, including state-of-the-art equipment, therapy gyms, inpatient school classrooms, child life activity centers, community outings and school visits and more.

We report our outcomes (success rates) so you can be certain of the high-quality care your child will receive.

Quality and patient safety in the Pediatric Inpatient Rehabilitation Program

Our team of pediatric rehabilitation specialists are dedicated to improving children’s independence, comfort and mental well-being so they can safely return to their home and community.

We track our patient care quality and safety outcomes (success rates) so we know that we are meeting our high standards and constantly improving our care. We publicly report our outcomes so you can see the level of care we provide and make informed decisions.

We also compare our outcomes to national benchmarks and other top children’s inpatient rehabilitation programs. This gives you a comprehensive view of our abilities and helps us create new goals to strive for.

Why do outcomes and transparency matter?

When children lose function due to an illness or injury, it affects their ability to be a kid. Helping them regain independence requires the best care, which is what they deserve.

We want to make it easier to find the best pediatric rehabilitation care. We report our outcomes with pride so you can know how we perform before making a care decision. And we share these outcomes because it’s simply the right thing to do.

By monitoring and evaluating outcomes, we can identify areas of strength and areas that may require improvement to enhance the quality and effectiveness of our services.

Our patient volume

Total patient volume — how many children we care for — is an important measure for pediatric inpatient rehabilitation. The more children we care for, the more experience we have and the better we will be.

What we measure: Total patient volume per year  

What it means: The more patients our pediatric rehabilitation program cares for, the more experience we have. As a high-volume program, we have an  exceptional level of pediatric expertise. We’re equipped with special pediatric equipment and a classroom staffed by doctors and therapists who have extra pediatric training. More experience fuels our drive for constant improvement and the ability to offer the most effective and up-to-date treatments for your child’s unique needs.

Our average hours of therapy

Every child we see receives individualized care based on their unique needs.

What we measure: The average number of hours of rehabilitation therapy a child receives per day. Therapy time includes physical, occupational and speech therapy as well as time in our school classroom.

What it means: We dedicate a lot of therapy time to kids in our care to help them gain function and independence. Seeing multiple specialists helps kids make progress and return home.

Age of our patients

Our team possesses specialized pediatric knowledge to ensure all children receive age-appropriate care from 6 months old to young adulthood. 

What we measure: The age of every patient on admission, each year

Age of patients between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022

What it means: No matter your child’s age, we have recent experience caring for kids like them. This also allows you to see how many kids of your child’s age we have cared for in the past year and ask our care team specific questions about our experience with children in a similar situation.

Our average length of stay

Our goal is to safely return children to their home and community with as much functional ability as possible. And the faster we can do that, the better for everyone.

What we measure: Average length of hospital stay compared to the national average

Average length of stay between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022

What it means: We will never let a child go home until they can do it safely and comfortably, but we know kids can’t fully be kids in the hospital. We work hard to get them home quickly and equip them and their families with the skills to continue to improve. Our patients have greater functional gains than the national average and we’re always evaluating our care so kids gain their maximum ability as quickly as possible.

Our WeeFIM^® improvement score

WeeFIM^® is the leading tool in pediatric rehabilitation to measure independent function in children. It measures how much help a child needs to do basic life activities like toothbrushing, getting dressed, walking or expressing themselves. The more kids can do day-to-day activities on their own, the higher their score.

What we measure: Each child’s improvement on the WeeFIM® scale during their hospital stay compared to the national average

Average WeeFIM^® improvement during a patient’s hospital stay between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022

What it means: Compared to the national average for pediatric inpatient rehabilitation programs, our patients showed a greater improvement in their self-care, movement and cognition skills. On average, children in our care go home with a higher level of independence than other inpatient rehabilitation programs, increasing their comfort and reducing readmissions. Our goal is to stay well above the national average.  

The diagnoses we treat

We care for children with a wide range of conditions and injuries that affect their daily function.

What we measure: The diagnosis of each condition we treat each year

Diagnoses between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2022

*Neurological conditions include the following:

• Multiple Sclerosis
• Parkinsonism
• Polyneuropathy
• Guillain-Barré
• Cerebral Palsy
• Neuromuscular Disorders
• Other Neurological Conditions

What it means:   The greater variety of conditions we care for, the greater our experience and the better our outcomes. We help children recover from many different types of illness and injury, with a specific expertise in all types of brain injuries in recent years.

Our length of stay by illness or injury

Different conditions or injuries require different levels of care and have different recovery times. We track length of stay for different diagnoses so we can understand the unique challenges of each and understand where our greatest areas for improvement are.

What we measure: Average length of stay for traumatic brain injury, non-traumatic brain injury, traumatic spinal cord injury and stroke compared to the national average for pediatric inpatient rehabilitation programs

Average length of stay by condition or injury between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022

What it means: When compared to the national average, Children’s Colorado’s length of stay is shorter for traumatic and non-traumatic brain injuries and stroke. Our length of stay for traumatic spinal cord injury is longer than the national average. We work hard to safely return children home quickly and identify opportunities to decrease our patients’ length of stay.

Our WeeFIM^® efficiency in the most common injuries or illnesses

WeeFIM^® efficiency measures the amount of progress a child makes in their independent functioning in relation to how long they are in our Program. The higher the efficiency score, the more functional skills they have gained while in our care and the more prepared they are for day-to-day tasks at home.

What we measure: WeeFIM^® efficiency compared to the national average for pediatric inpatient rehabilitation programs for our four most common diagnoses in the past year: traumatic brain injury, non-traumatic brain injury, traumatic spinal cord injury and stroke

WeeFIM^® efficiency by condition or injury between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021

What it means: Children’s Colorado has a higher WeeFIM^® efficiency than the national average for our four most common injuries and conditions in the past year. Our patients are making more progress in their functional skills in the same amount of time than the national average for inpatient rehabilitation programs.

Our patients who are discharged to their community

Returning children home safely is our ultimate goal. While some children need extra therapy at short-term care facilities after they leave our Program, we try as hard as we can to send kids directly home.

What we measure: The percent of children who go directly home after our care compared to the national average

Percent of patients discharged home between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022

What it means: When children leave our care, they may need therapy at short-term care facilities, but more often than not they are ready to go home and live their lives. We exceed the national average and are continually looking to increase the number of kids we send directly home with maximum functionality.

Patient and family experience in our Pediatric Inpatient Rehabilitation Program

We’re not satisfied until our patients and their families are satisfied with our care. We track patient satisfaction so we can improve our care and patient and family experience. We ask patient families to rate their experience on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the best possible experience.

What we measure: Percent of patients who rate us as a 9 or 10 between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022  

What it means: Patient families overwhelmingly rate their experience in our inpatient rehabilitation program as positive.

Our readmission rate

When we send kids home, we want them to stay there. It’s where they are most comfortable, where they can live their best lives. It’s also a good measure of how effective our care is.

What we measure: The percent of patients who need to return to our hospital for care

What it means: Most children we care for don’t need to return to our hospital for care. And in 2022, none of our patients returned to our hospital for rehabilitation care. Our goal is that 10% or less of our patients are readmitted in any given year.

Our return to school rate

Kids participating in daily activities like school after they go home is a key marker of success for our Program. We want children to participate in as many activities as they can.

What we measure: The percent of patients who have returned to school 3 months after they went home between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022

What it means: In the previous year, 87.5% of our school-aged patients returned to a school setting within 90 days of leaving our Program. A smooth transition from rehabilitation to school is an important part of the transition process and requires close communication. We work with families and schools to ensure kids can get back in the classroom as soon as possible.

We track and report our outcomes to make sure we — and you — know where we are excelling and where we haven’t met the high standards we set for ourselves. Our goal, and our everyday mission, is continual improvement.

Our patient diversity

Knowing our patients and families' individual preferences, values and sociocultural backgrounds gives us the ability to tailor services and delivery of patient care.

What we measure: Patient race, preferred language and gender.

What it means: We ask about identity because we care. By understanding who our patients are, we can adapt communication styles, address language barriers, respect cultural practices and provide personalized care that aligns with the patient's unique needs and circumstances.

Our patients' race

Our patients' gender

Our patients' primary language