National Sleep Foundation's updated sleep duration recommendations: final report.

Objective: To make scientifically sound and practical recommendations for daily sleep duration across the life span.

Methods: The National Sleep Foundation convened a multidisciplinary expert panel (Panel) with broad representation from leading stakeholder organizations. The Panel evaluated the latest scientific evidence and participated in a formal consensus and voting process.

National Sleep Foundation's sleep time duration recommendations: methodology and results summary.

Objective: The objective was to conduct a scientifically rigorous update to the National Sleep Foundation's sleep duration recommendations.

Methods: The National Sleep Foundation convened an 18-member multidisciplinary expert panel, representing 12 stakeholder organizations, to evaluate scientific literature concerning sleep duration recommendations. We determined expert recommendations for sufficient sleep durations across the lifespan using the RAND/UCLA Appropriateness Method.

National quality measures for child mental health care: background, progress, and next steps.

Objective: To review recent health policies related to measuring child health care quality, the selection processes of national child health quality measures, the nationally recommended quality measures for child mental health care and their evidence strength, the progress made toward developing new measures, and early lessons learned from these national efforts.

Methods: Methods used included description of the selection process of child health care quality measures from 2 independent national initiatives, the recommended quality measures for child mental health care, and the strength of scientific evidence supporting them.

Results: Of the child health quality measures recommended or endorsed during these national initiatives, only 9 unique measures were related to child mental health.

Emerging medicolegal issues in the practice of pediatric sleep medicine.

With the rapid growth in the field of pediatric sleep medicine, health care providers need to be aware of several emerging legal issues that have the potential of impacting their clinical practice. This article provides an overview of emerging legal areas that might impact the practice of pediatric sleep medicine, and discusses civil liability emerging from medical malpractice, issues that health care providers must be aware of including issues related to providing care for minors, and newer areas that relate to legal prosecution for health care fraud as it may relate to violations of quality of care.

Making the case to improve quality and reduce costs in pediatric health care.

This article makes a case for the urgent need to improve health care quality and reduce costs. It provides an overview of the importance of the quality movement and the definition of quality, including the concept of clinical and operational quality. Some national drivers for quality improvement as well as drivers of escalating health care costs are discussed, along with the urgency of reducing health care costs.

Databases for assessing the outcomes of the treatment of patients with congenital and paediatric cardiac disease--the perspective of critical care.

The development of databases to track the outcomes of children with cardiovascular disease has been ongoing for much of the last two decades, paralleled by the rise of databases in the intensive care unit. While the breadth of data available in national, regional and local databases has grown exponentially, the ability to identify meaningful measurements of outcomes for patients with cardiovascular disease is still in its early stages. In the United States of America, the Virtual Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Performance System (VPS) is a clinically based database system for the paediatric intensive care unit that provides standardized high quality, comparative data to its participants [https://portal.

Electronic healthcare data collection and pay-for-performance: translating theory into practice.

With insight grounded in his work for a national data collection consortium and as Vice President of Quality and Outcomes at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, the author connects the theory of pay-for-performance to the realities of its implementation. The author expands the Diagnosing the Data conversation by describing the challenges of collecting meaningful data and by addressing the potential legal issues that data use raises. Drawing on his national and local experience, the author concludes with suggestions for adopting data collection programs that are both clinically relevant and scientifically reliable.

A randomized, controlled trial of the effectiveness of community-based case management in insuring uninsured Latino children.

Background: Lack of health insurance adversely affects children's health. Eight million US children are uninsured, with Latinos being the racial/ethnic group at greatest risk for being uninsured. A randomized, controlled trial comparing the effectiveness of various public insurance strategies for insuring uninsured children has never been conducted.

Extubation failure in pediatric intensive care: a multiple-center study of risk factors and outcomes.

Objective: To determine a contemporary failed extubation rate, risk factors, and consequences of extubation failure in pediatric intensive care units (PICUs). Three hypotheses were investigated: a) Extubation failure is in part disease specific; b) preexisting respiratory conditions predispose to extubation failure; and c) admission acuity scoring does not affect extubation failure.

Design: Twelve-month prospective, observational, clinical study.