A regionally-established pediatric asthma care management program, which includes leveraging a student health record platform, is extending its reach.
Children's Hospital Colorado, the University of Colorado School of Medicine at CU Anschutz Medical Campus, and New York City-based pediatric healthcare technology company CareDox recently announced a new collaboration to scale the reach of the hospital's in-school asthma management program.
CareDox modeled this collaboration after the hospital's "Building Bridges for Asthma Care Program," which began in 2012, and is now offering its new care management platform to the more than 7,100 K-12 schools where the company's student health record platform and wellness services are already deployed.
By combining proven clinical protocols with widely deployed technology and wellness services operations, the three organizations “are poised to dramatically improve outcomes for pediatric asthmatics across the country,” officials of this partnership have attested.
The Building Bridges for Asthma Care Program is now deployed in 28 public elementary schools in Denver, Colo. and Hartford, Conn. The school program in Colorado was developed by Stanley Szefler, M.D., director of the pediatric asthma research program at Children's Hospital Colorado and the CU School of Medicine. Throughout the school year, school nurses train their students on asthma management, inhaler technique and other clinical best practices, and the students' absenteeism, physical activity and asthma control levels are monitored by nurses and communicated to their parents and healthcare providers.
In a study of the impact of the program published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, participants in the program experienced a 22-percent decrease in school absenteeism. Officials have noted that currently, approximately six million children under the age of 18 have asthma. It’s the top reason for missed school, totaling nearly 14 million days each year. Socioeconomically disadvantaged children and minority children are disproportionately affected by asthma. In these two groups, asthma is more often left uncontrolled, leading not only to absenteeism, but also disrupted sleep.
CareDox’s asthma care management program is already in use in the Clay County district schools in Florida, where there are more than 3,700 students who are known to have asthma. In addition to those students, CareDox leveraged medical data that resides on their student records platform to identify 345 additional students who are eligible for the program that weren't already known to school nurses and health officials as asthmatic.
In just three months, CareDox has already implemented the proven Children's Hospital Colorado/CU School of Medicine protocols to qualify about 1,200 students with asthma into the company’s asthma management program, of which 349 are eligible for CareDox's expanded care program for severe uncontrolled asthma.
The expanded care program includes four key components to address uncontrolled asthma among student populations, according to officials. One of these elements is the technology-enabled identification of new enrollees, which CareDox will leverage its student health record platform and enrollment processes for wellness services (flu and other vaccines, annual wellness checks) to screen for eligible asthma students.
"Children's Hospital Colorado and CU School of Medicine providers created the Building Bridges for Asthma Care Program to address the risk of health disparities and asthma-related absenteeism, as well as its related impact on academic achievement for inner city students," Robin Deterding, M.D., director of the Breathing Institute at Children's Hospital Colorado, medical director of the Hospital's Center for Innovation and professor of pulmonary medicine in the Department of Pediatrics at the CU School of Medicine, said in a statement. “Building Bridges has proven that a school-centered asthma management program can have a positive impact on pediatric health and ultimately reduce asthma-related absenteeism within a school's population. Now by partnering with CareDox, we have the ability to drastically expand the program's footprint and reduce asthma-related absenteeism on a massive scale,” he added.
Like CareDox's existing school vaccination and annual wellness check programs, the company’s asthma care management program will be offered to eligible students at no cost to the student, their parents or the school district. CareDox partners with public and private health insurance to support the program, officials stated.
