Quality Improvement

Promoting a culture of quality at the Division of Specialized Care for Children (DSCC) is one of our top priorities.

We believe in continuous quality improvement to make sure we are providing the best service and support to Illinois children and youth with special healthcare needs and their families.

Quality Activities

Quality is a DSCC-wide philosophy that includes every member of our team. Therefore, our quality improvement activities affect all participants enrolled in our programs.

These activities support our continuous growth and improvement:

  • Internal Record Reviews
  • Quality Improvement Champions
  • Quality Improvement Huddles
  • Improvement Plans
  • Incident Reports
  • Family Surveys
  • Education/Training for Staff
  • Reporting, Analysis and Improvement
  • External Audits/Reviews/Investigations
  • Scorecard
  • Program Success Metrics
  • Grievances

You can review our DSCC Quality Activity Guide for a detailed description of each activity. (The Quality Activity Guide is also available in Spanish.)

Program Success Metrics

We have developed a scorecard to give our team data about our performance on established process measures, outcome goals and targets. We use the scorecard data to celebrate our strengths, share what is working and create plans to improve where necessary.

We use four specific program success metrics from our scorecard data to help us understand our work with families. These metrics and the latest results are:

  • Improved Quality of Life (4.4 out of 5 score for fiscal year 2023)
  • Creation of a comprehensive signed person-centered plan (67 percent for FY 2023)
  • Progress and/or achievement of goals on the person-centered plan (57 percent for quarter 1 of FY 2024)
  • Overall satisfaction with DSCC care coordination services (4.5 out of 5 score for FY 2023)

We also measure participation in our programs with an initial and ongoing participation rate. For FY 2023, our participation rate is 94 percent.

You can review our Program Success Metrics Guide for more details on how we calculate each metric. (The Program Success Metrics Guide is also available in Spanish.)