Who We Are
We are health care professionals and families at more than 1,200 member centers collaborating to improve neonatal care around the world.
About Vermont Oxford Network
Vermont Oxford Network is a nonprofit voluntary collaboration of health care professionals working together as an interdisciplinary community to change the landscape of neonatal care.
Mission: To improve the quality, safety, and value of care for newborn infants and their families through a coordinated program of data-driven quality improvement, education, and research.
Vision: A worldwide community dedicated to giving infants the best possible care so that every child and family achieves their fullest potential.
Measurement for Data-Driven Decisions
We believe improvement must be informed by data.
With more than 1,200 centers worldwide submitting data on VLBW and all NICU admissions, our reporting tools give centers the necessary data and benchmarks to make meaningful local improvement.
Teams in our improvement collaboratives participate in VON Day Audits, point-prevalence quality audits that include unit-level and patient-level measures for benchmarking and to inform their improvement projects. Our foundational QI education helps all VON members build the skills and shared understanding of using measurement to inform and demonstrate meaningful improvement.
Implementing Evidence into Practice
We believe in small tests of change.
VON has developed its Sequence to Achieve Change that navigates teams through steps to optimize their quality improvement work.
This structured approach to QI integrates key aspects of VON’s successful programs that include teamwork, families as partners, evidence-based potentially better practices, and iterative tests of change. We refer to these improvement ideas as Potentially Better Practices (PBPs) rather than “better” or “best” practices to indicate that no practice is better or best until it is adapted, tested, and shown to work in the local context.
Partnering with Families
We believe families are essential partners in every stage of improvement.
Family partners are core faculty and advisors for our programs and are fully empowered members of teams participating in VON QI collaboratives.
We welcome families to share their stories and improvement projects as a central part our improvement programs.
Supporting Health Equity
We believe there is no quality without equity.
We developed the concept of “follow through,” a comprehensive approach to address health equity that begins before birth and continues into childhood involving health professionals, families, and communities as partners to meet the social as well as medical needs of infants and families. To help individuals and teams follow through, we also developed a list of potentially better practices.
Teams in VON QI collaboratives have worked to develop effective programs to address health equity and follow through.
Our global health initiatives support health equity by partnering with neonatal care teams in resource-limited communities to enable sustainable data-driven quality improvement.
Since the founding of our worldwide improvement community, we have fostered an inclusive culture to support and empower diverse voices. By learning from members and leading through action, we demonstrate our commitment to each individual person involved in giving every infant and family the best possible start to life.
Collaborating with Teams and the Community
We believe everyone has a role in improving care.
VON members dedicated to data-driven quality improvement have changed the landscape of neonatal care because we have created a culture of improvement together.
Through Vermont Oxford Network, improvements to neonatal care spread across centers worldwide as changes to practices are tested and adapted. Centers participating in VON QI Collaboratives learn how to become more effective teams to create lasting change in care processes and practices. We develop global health initiatives in partnership with teams to meet the needs of the local setting.
Our community comes together to learn from each other and share data-driven improvements through our QI collaboratives, Grand Rounds webinars, VON Commons, and other settings.
Join Us
VON members contribute to databases and receive extensive reporting with regional and international benchmarks to target clinical practices and patient outcomes.
All staff at VON member centers are part of our learning community and can participate in QI education, a focused improvement collaborative, and conversations/resource-sharing for no additional cost.
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