Improving Care for Children With Complex Needs

Not Applicable

Completed

Conditions: Medically Complex Children
Care Manager
Collaborative Care
Managed Care
Shared Care Plan
Case Manager
Disease Management
Health Care and Resource Utilization
Children With Chronic Conditions
Adherence to Care

Interventions: Behavioral: Comprehensive Case Management Service

Registration Number: NCT01587105

Lead Sponsor: Seattle Children's Hospital

Brief Summary: Seattle Children's Hospital (SCH), in collaboration with several health plans and Washington State Department of Social and Health Services developed the Comprehensive Case Management (CCM) program with the goal to reduce costs of care for medically complex children cared for at SCH as well as improve their health status and the quality of care they receive. The CCM program aims to develop and facilitate a reliable and standardized process that empowers the child's primary care provider and provides him/her with the resources s/he needs to avoid unnecessary emergency department visits and admissions. Our study will include children who had a hospitalization or emergency department visit at Seattle Children's between 2009-2012 and, at that time, had multiple active chronic medical issues but had no specialty service at Seattle Children's to help their primary care providers manage them.

Detailed Description: Children with complex health care needs often lack a comprehensive care plan and access to case management. They are at risk for frequent and prolonged hospitalizations, fragmented care, parental stress/burnout and unsafe care. To address this issue, Seattle Children's Hospital developed the Comprehensive Case Management (CCM) program, which includes access to a special clinic at Seattle Children's with case managers and a health care team that works with parents and community physicians to create care plans for children with complex needs.

The investigators goal is to evaluate whether children who participate in the CCM program have better parent reported access to needed care, timeliness of receiving needed services, more coordinated care, improved health status, and higher parent satisfaction with care compared to children who receive care outside the CCM program. In addition, the investigators will examine whether these children experience decreased annual costs of care, emergency department visits, hospital admissions, and hospital lengths of stay compared to children receiving care outside the program. The investigators also want to understand whether community physicians who have patients enrolled in the CCM program are more satisfied with caring for children with complex medical needs than physicians caring for these children outside the program.

The investigators plan to enroll 650 parents of eligible children into the I3CN study. Three hundred twenty five of these parents will have children enrolled in the CCM program and 325 will have children who continue to receive usual care. Enrolled parents complete a survey every 6 months during the study (5 surveys over 2 ½ years) in order to assess study outcomes including parent perceived. Parent participation in the study will be completed 2 ½ years after enrollment.

When a child enrolls in the CCM program, the child's parent will work together with the CCM team at Seattle Children's to develop a shared care plan for their child. The CCM team includes physicians, nurse practitioners, social workers, nutritionists, and nurse case managers. This plan will include all of the child's routine health care needs in addition to information about what to do when the child gets sick. Community providers will also be asked to review and provide input on the shared care plan. Once the shared care plan is in place, the parent, primary care provider (PCP), and the CCM clinic will follow the standardized processes established by the program and the shared care plan when the child becomes ill.

During the course of the 2 ½ year study, the investigators will analyze our outcomes of interest every 6 months. If the investigators find that children in the CCM the program are experiencing significantly better outcomes than children receiving care outside the program, they will stop the study and open the program to all eligible children.

Recruitment & Eligibility

Status: COMPLETED

Sex: All

Target Recruitment: 331

Inclusion Criteria

between the ages of 3 months and 18 years,
have at least three chronic medical conditions requiring active management
were hospitalized or had an emergency department (ED) visit at SCH within the last year
their PCP is enrolled in the study

Exclusion Criteria

had 2+ visits to Pulmonary, Craniofacial, or Rheumatology within the last year
had 3+ visits to Nephrology, Gastroenterology and has either Short Gut Syndrome or Crohn's Disease, Endocrinology or Neuromuscular Clinic within the last year
has had 2+ visits to the Neurodevelopmental clinic and is followed by a NDV doctor
cancer patient
transplant recipient
has cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy or sickle cell anemia
has Down Syndrome and does not have any other medical issues aside from developmental delays
renal patient on dialysis
had a hospitalization for > 27 days

Study & Design

Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL

Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Comprehensive Care Management Service	Comprehensive Case Management Service	Care Coordination through the Comprehensive Care Management Service at Seattle Children's Hospital

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Inpatient Admissions Per Child	Baseline, 12 month, 18 month
Cost of Care	Baseline, 12 month, 18 month	The investigators will examine whether the children in the CCM group experience decreased annual costs of care.
Health Care Quality Ranking	Baseline, 12-months, 18-months	For Healthcare Quality Rating, the construct is Parent Satisfaction. Parents were asked to rate the quality of the health care their child received. Overall range is 0-100. Higher values equal a better outcome or more satisfaction. Sub scales are not combined. The scale is considered continuous.
ED Visits Per Child	Baseline, 12-month, 18-month
Hospital Days Per Child	Baseline, 12-Month, 18-Month	Number of days each participant stayed in the hospital; assessed from hospital administrative discharge data

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Physician Satisfaction	Baseline, 12 Months, 18 months	Primary care provider (PCP)'s satisfaction with the care coordination program was measured on a scale of 0-100, where the higher number indicates more satisfaction. This variable was collected at baseline and 12-months but was dropped from the 18 month follow-up as previous analysis suggested it was not relevant to the stated objective.