The CLABs collaborative: A regionwide effort to improve the quality of care in hospitals

The CLABs collaborative provided additional evidence that implementation of the central line bundle, coupled with standardized line maintenance procedures, is correlated with a reduction in, and sometimes elimination of, CLABs. In its ongoing work, the CLABs collaborative will focus on line maintenance, sustaining the collaborative's results, and continuing to share best practices beyond the ICU setting. The New York State Department of Health is now partnering with GNYHA and UHF to adopt the collaborative model to address infections caused by Clostridium difficile in the acute care and long term care settings. The CLABs collaborative highlighted the value and importance of building regional capacity in quality and patient safety, and as a result, GNYHA and UHF have developed new collaboratives to improve perinatal safety and to initiate rapid response systems. Borrowing from the CLABs collaborative interdisciplinary approach, they have created a Critical Care Leadership Network to design and initiate QI efforts and to provide critical care educational programs led by the region's physician and nursing leaders. Building on the expert-on-call component, GNYHA and UHF have developed a Clinical Quality Fellowship program to educate practitioners as QI experts to lead quality initiatives within their own organizations and to become experts-on-call for future GNYHA/UHF initiatives.