An innovative approach for coordinating multiple sedated procedures in medically complex pediatric patients.

Children and youth with special health care needs often undergo a higher frequency of sedated procedures, increasing their risk for complications, prolonged hospitalizations, as well as increased time and cost burdens. By consolidating multiple procedures requiring anesthetic sedation, the risk and cost can be reduced for both families and health care systems. In this paper, we discuss an innovative model to coordinate procedures across internal and external providers to improve quality of care for this vulnerable patient population. Although preliminary, our findings suggest this approach may be beneficial to both the patient, family, and health system.

Implementing a social work care coordination model for children and youth with special health care needs in a rural-urban health system.

This retrospective chart review examined care coordination among pediatric patients with varying levels of medical complexity who received care in a rural-urban health system. Care coordination utilization across patient acuity levels was examined for meaningful differences in frequency and duration of care coordination services. Results indicated that patients with more severe medical complexity had increased frequency and duration of care coordination services, as well as different patterns of care coordination activity utilization. This model of pediatric outpatient care coordination provides a flexible and highly targeted approach for stratification of care and services based on the needs of the individual patient.

Pediatric care coordination and risk tiering: Moving beyond claims data.

PURPOSE: The goal of this study was to evaluate the performance of a pediatric stratification tool that incorporates health and non-medical determinants to identify children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN) patients according to increasing levels of complexity and compare this method to existing tools for pediatric populations. METHODS: This retrospective cohort study examined pediatric patients aged 0 to 21 years who received care at our institution between 2012 and 2015. We used the St. Luke's Children's Acuity Tool (SLCAT) to evaluate mean differences in dollars billed, number of encounters, and number of problems on the problem list and compared the SLCAT to the Pediatric Chronic Conditions Classification System version2 (CCCv2). RESULTS: Results indicate that the SLCAT assigned pediatric patients into levels reflective of resource utilization and found that children with highly complex chronic conditions had significantly higher utilization than those with mild and/or moderate complex conditions. The SLCAT found 515 patients not identified by the CCCv2. Nearly half of those patients had a mental/behavioral health diagnosis. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of this study provide evidence that a tiered classification model that incorporates all aspects of a child's care may result in more accurate identification of CYSHCN. This would allow for primary care provider and care coordination teams to match patients and families with the appropriate amount and type of care coordination services.