Pediatric collaborative improvement networks: bridging quality gaps to improve health outcomes.

In 2003, the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP) endorsed a network model as a means to accelerate the translation of evidence into practice, to improve care and outcomes for children, and to serve as the gold standard for the performance in practice component of Maintenance of Certification (MOC) for pediatricians. This model involves multisite practice-based clinical networks that allow teams to learn from one another, to effectively test and implement changes, and to use data to understand and ultimately spread what works in practice. Networks are especially important in pediatrics, and particularly in subspecialty pediatrics, where no one center or group of physicians has a large enough sample of children to readily learn if what they are doing works.