Pediatric Hospital Medicine Report Card Defines Benchmarks Across 13 Common Conditions

Researchers developed an Achievable Benchmarks of Care (ABCs) report card for pediatric hospital medicine using a retrospective cross-sectional analysis of the Pediatric Health Information System database. The study covered encounters for 13 common conditions from January 2023 through December 2024. Measures included length of stay, readmissions, and condition-specific imaging, laboratory tests, procedures, and medications. Benchmarks were calculated from top-performing hospitals representing at least 10% of each condition cohort.

The analysis included 115 measures and 237,283 hospitalizations, accounting for 33.5% of nonsurgical discharges among children meeting study eligibility criteria. Length-of-stay benchmarks were below 48 hours for 11 conditions and below 74 hours for osteomyelitis and septic arthritis. Those two conditions had the largest length-of-stay performance gaps, defined as the difference between median hospital performance and the benchmark. Readmission benchmarks were below 2.0% across all conditions. For respiratory conditions, chest radiograph benchmarks ranged from 20.6% to 57.9%, with reported performance gaps of 18.3%–22.4%.

The report card is intended to support local and multicenter quality-improvement efforts by identifying differences between typical and high-performing hospitals. These observational benchmarks do not establish that changing utilization to meet them improves patient outcomes. Only the abstract was available; details of eligibility criteria, readmission windows, and adjustment for patient complexity could not be assessed.