Promoting Early Diagnosis of Congenital Hearing Loss With Patient Navigators

Parents of children who fail infant hearing screening at birth at the University of Kentucky or other hospitals in the area that are receiving follow up diagnostic testing at UK Audiology or the Commission for Children with Special Health Care Needs will be enrolled in the first part of the study and randomized into either a patient navigator group or the standard practice group. We will compare the failure to follow-up for testing rates between groups. Of those enrolled subjects, the age of the children when they obtain diagnostic testing will be assessed and compared between the patient navigator group and the standard practice group. This arm will further quantify the effect of the navigator on diagnostic testing timing.

The second arm strives to continue and build upon the first assessment by evaluating hearing follow up in children up to six months of age who are diagnosed with hearing loss. Parents of children born at the University of Kentucky and at other hospitals who are following up as outpatients at UK who are diagnosed with hearing loss will be approached for enrollment. Parents of children in this arm of the study that did not participate in Arm 1 or did participate in Arm 1 but that were randomized to the control group are randomized from the age of enrollment until one year old to a patient navigator group or standard practice group. Parents of children that participated in Arm 1 that were randomized to patient navigation that enroll in Arm 2 will not be randomized and will continue to receive patient navigation. This group of subjects will be assessed to find what follow up is conducted once the child is diagnosed with hearing loss. As in the first arm, the navigator group will have regular phone follow ups with the patient navigator and the standard practice group will not have contact. Both groups will be given or mailed questionnaires, asking them about where they obtained services for the child with regard to hearing follow up and intervention. This will assess the effect of a navigator on parental education and support, timing of diagnostic services, and implementation of interventions with regard to pediatric hearing loss.