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Partners For Kids

Bringing Behavioral Health Into the Medical Home
 Bringing Behavioral Health Into the Medical Home 1024 683 Pam Georgiana
By: Pam Georgiana

Scaling integrated care across community pediatrics increases access to and utilization of mental health care. When a teenage patient shared feelings of anxiety and depression during a routine wellness visit, the pediatrician immediately called in the behavioral health clinician down the hall. Within minutes, both providers met with the patient and family. They left with…

Better Asthma Outcomes: A Systems-Level Approach
 Better Asthma Outcomes: A Systems-Level Approach 1024 422 Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES
By: Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES
Smiling child wearing a blue bike helmet and vest while riding outdoors on a sunny day, promoting bicycle safety and healthy outdoor activities for kids.

A dedicated team of experts embraced sweeping tactics to reduce asthma-related emergency department visits by 33% and inpatient length of stay by 0.9 days. This is how they did it. It started with a conversation about the data: Why are kids with asthma the hospital’s most frequent fliers? After all, excellent preventive and acute treatments…

What Types of Contraception Are Best Following Early Pregnancy Loss?
 What Types of Contraception Are Best Following Early Pregnancy Loss? 1024 683 Geri Hewitt, MD, Elise Berlan, MD, MPH and Johanna Taylor, APN
By: Geri Hewitt, MD, Elise Berlan, MD, MPH and Johanna Taylor, APN

Following early pregnancy loss (EPL), miscarriage or spontaneous abortion, pregnancy tests remain positive for several weeks often creating a challenge for clinicians initiating contraception. Fertility returns rapidly after EPL and almost all adolescents may use their contraceptive method of choice immediately after the pregnancy. Pregnancy tests detect the presence of human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), a…

QI Initiative Reduces Emergency Room Visits for Functional Constipation
 QI Initiative Reduces Emergency Room Visits for Functional Constipation 1024 683 Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES
By: Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES

Preliminary data from a large accountable care organization’s quality improvement efforts suggest advanced care visits dropped 27% in two years. Partners For Kids (PFK), the nation’s oldest and largest pediatric accountable care organization, launched a series of quality improvement (QI) projects targeting disease management strategies that could significantly impact healthcare utilization and outcomes for children…

Understanding and Implementing the Latest Recommendations for Asthma Management
 Understanding and Implementing the Latest Recommendations for Asthma Management 770 513 Emily Siebenmorgen
By: Emily Siebenmorgen

New guidelines for the care and treatment of asthma in children were released in 2020, but implementation has been slowed by the pandemic and need for education. An estimated 8% of children had asthma in 2020, and it continues to have a significant impact in the lives of many kids. It interferes with their sports…

Reconsidering Screening in Primary Care
 Reconsidering Screening in Primary Care 1024 683 Jeb Phillips
By: Jeb Phillips
2021 Bright Futures/AAP Recommendations for Preventive Pediatric Health Care (Periodicity Schedule) in color showing all of the screenings recommended across 34 patient visits through a patient's twenty-second birthday

Screenings are an important part of preventive care, but the growing list of recommendations is daunting. How do we prioritize the limited time we have with patients and families? There are 32 well-child primary care visits recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics in its Bright Futures “Periodicity Schedule.” The first is prenatal, the last…

“Left Behind Again:” Rural Children Enrolled in Medicaid Use Home Health Services Far Less Than Urban Children
 “Left Behind Again:” Rural Children Enrolled in Medicaid Use Home Health Services Far Less Than Urban Children 1024 575 Jeb Phillips
By: Jeb Phillips

Data from a pediatric accountable care organization is allowing physicians and researchers to explore the rural-urban health care gap. While it’s long been clear that children in rural areas have reduced access to some kinds of health care services compared to their urban peers, understanding the specifics of the care gap has proven difficult, because…

How Practical COVID-19 Education for Community Providers Sprang From a Pediatric Behavioral Health Project ECHO
 How Practical COVID-19 Education for Community Providers Sprang From a Pediatric Behavioral Health Project ECHO 1024 575 Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES
By: Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES

When Partners For Kids® (PFK) and Nationwide Children’s Hospital launched Project ECHO in 2018, they did it to help community providers cope with common behavioral health conditions in their patient populations. Unexpectedly, it became a tool to supply Ohio physicians with some of the most proactive education in the nation about adapting their business practices to accommodate COVID-19-related…

Reducing Asthma-Related Emergency Department Visits
 Reducing Asthma-Related Emergency Department Visits 480 320 Abbie Miller
By: Abbie Miller

Through serial interventions and teamwork, the initiative reduced asthma-related ED utilization rates by nearly 4% per year at a time when national rates were rising. Numerous studies have demonstrated that quality improvement (QI) methodologies improve asthma outcomes. However, moving that success from individual patients to a large population is challenging. In a recent study published…

A Deep-Learning Computer Model for Predicting Pediatric Patient Health Care Risks and Costs
 A Deep-Learning Computer Model for Predicting Pediatric Patient Health Care Risks and Costs 150 150 Kevin Mayhood
By: Kevin Mayhood

The model, which requires fewer resources and less time to develop, outperformed traditional risk-prediction models in prospective hospitalization prediction. A deep-learning computer model was better at predicting the health care risk of 112,000 children in a Medicaid accountable care organization (ACO) than traditional risk prediction models, researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital have shown. “Using this…

Pharmacists: The ‘Next Big Thing’ in Population Health Management
 Pharmacists: The ‘Next Big Thing’ in Population Health Management 1020 304 Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES
By: Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES
Nationwide Children's style illustration showing a row of houses with a prescription in front of it

One of the nation’s largest pediatric accountable care organizations has expanded pharmacists’ role in quality improvement efforts, which could substantially impact prescribing patterns and patient management. Partners For Kids (PFK), one of the country’s oldest and largest pediatric accountable care organizations, is a provider-based organization dedicated to population health management with three key aims: improved…

Intervention for Medically Complex Children Improves Health, Saves Money
 Intervention for Medically Complex Children Improves Health, Saves Money 800 533 Kevin Mayhood
By: Kevin Mayhood

The population-based program features coordinated care, education and feeding tube management. A population-based intervention for children with medical complexity in central and southeast Ohio led to fewer admissions, shorter hospital stays and a reduction of inpatient charges of nearly $11.8 million over 30 months, all while making children healthier. Nationwide Children’s Hospital and its affiliated…