Teaming Up for Healthier Kids
What you don't know can hurt you – even send you to the hospital – when it comes to asthma.
That's why 165 local physicians in 44 practices have teamed up with Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center to pool their expertise in helping young patients prevent asthma episodes before they become life-threatening, according to Chris Cunha, MD, a pediatrician with Pediatric Associates in Northern Kentucky.
Through their partnership with Cincinnati Children's, these doctors have computer access to a database that is regularly updated with the latest information about their asthma patients. They hope their improvement efforts will positively impact the 13,000 children with asthma receiving care within the 44 practices. Dr. Cunha notes the condition affects more than 20,000 local children.
Local Guidelines for Local Conditions
Although national guidelines for treating asthma exist, doctors at Cincinnati Children's have customized them to the area because peaks in asthma attacks are directly related to the local environment, says Dr. Cunha, a member of the board promoting the hospital-physician collaboration.
"Treating asthma in this area is challenging because we are situated in a valley where pollen and other factors trigger asthma attacks in the spring and fall," he says. "Children in the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky area are also affected by the high number of smokers here."
Learnings Lead to Better Care
Periodically, physicians in this collaboration survey parents of their asthma patients, asking how much they know about their child's condition and how the practice can help them. After loading results into the database, local physicians can track trends to discover gaps in knowledge.
"Once we pooled parents' answers, we discovered we needed to do more education about asthma," Dr. Cunha says. One of the doctors' goals is to teach children and parents more about the disease so they can better manage it. "Parents know their children better than physicians do," he says.
He adds that families also benefit from the latest knowledge. "As new therapies and medications develop, physicians can learn how to use them quickly and efficiently through the web-based system we're all linked to."
Also, since local guidelines are standardized, patients who relocate to this geographic area will receive more consistent care, Dr. Cunha explains.
Sharing Best Practices
The system also provides an outlet for local physicians to share creative approaches for treating children with asthma.
For example, this summer, when many children were stopping in for sports physicals, Dr. Cunha's staff opened up their fall appointment schedule for flu shots, allowing patients to sign up while they were there.
"We have a Flu Shot Saturday in the fall when we deliver 500 to 700 shots in one day," he says. They posted their idea on the doctors' shared web site, and this brainchild of one pediatric practice spread to other physicians as a way to protect their patients during flu season.
In the long run, Dr. Cunha hopes the collaboration will yield at least three advantages to young asthma patients: less frequent use of the emergency room, fewer and shorter hospital stays, and a better understanding of the disease so children can lead as normal a life as possible.
"Physicians welcome questions about better care for their patients," he says. "With this new initiative, we are better prepared to work with parents to identify problems and to work on solutions together."
