The Kennedy Crager Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, is a healthcare facility for children with development disabilities and neurological problems. She does some strong work in distance medical medicine with a program called Start.
Start means examining the access team to sorting and referring the referral team. It is a (free) sorting program that aims to increase access and reduce waiting times. It was launched in February 2024, led by Dr. Paul Lipkin, Professor of Pediatrics at the Kennedy Crager Institute and Jones Hopkins College of Medicine.
Challenge
Kennedy Crager has a long -term problem with a high demand for its specialized services and very limited working forces. The result was the families that call for that after that very long waiting times to be seen – 237 days on average. The institute was looking for a solution to this problem.
an offer
The Covid-19s was created an opportunity for Kennedy Krieger employees to think about the way they were sponsoring.
“Before the epidemic, he did not take enough time to think about new ways to face this challenge,” he remembers Leipkin. “The epidemic did not give us enough time to think about these things and discuss them in an organized and cooperative manner, but rather we were also subjected to remote health care capabilities, and remotely working with families.
“Before a remote medication, we have always worked from brick buildings and mortars and expected to be seen before doing anything.” “But with the epidemic, we realized that one can communicate well with individuals in other ways, especially in this case, through video discussions.”
Facing the challenge
When the institute was designing the beginning, he wanted to take advantage of video contacts with families to employ some experience that had inside the institution to facilitate entry.
“Therefore, before starting, the families contacted the phone call with a trained individual on the site, forced to decipher the child’s needs and then put the child in queues for different types of services they need,” explained to Bekeen. “Since we are dealing with development problems, development disabilities, and neurological problems, it is usually one service that you benefit from. It is usually multiple services.
“Families will be sent models,” continued. “They will be placed on different waiting lists. They can wait weeks or months before they hear from anyone. Participation and interaction with families and non -personal have often been dismantled.”
Employees in one way to improve the process were that doctors and nurses familiar with these medical problems meet with families in advance and discover problems before the child is inserted into care systems.
“This is the way you start, with this intention,” said Lipkin. “It took a lot of coordination on our part in advance with all these other services to make them on board, to make them understand the ways they can facilitate the vision of children, and bypassing many paper and bureaucratic works that have accumulated over decades.
“Therefore, we had a dedicated team of doctors, nurses, therapeutic professionals and officials who reached the design of a program, and we got a purchase of specific programs, and we prepared the starting system, which includes an interview with one of the parents across a distance shortly after contacting the institute and making a decision regarding what the child needs based on what the parents’ concerns are,” he added.
This opportunity also arose, thanks to the newly promoted electronic health records system, to try to integrate all this In EHR.
“Before that, the families were sent paper models,” Lipkin said. “They sat on waiting lists and files, and digital or paper copies. What we did as we did with our health information technology team is to make sure that everything we do will go directly to EHR.
“Indeed, from the beginning, when the family calls us, every part of the information they provide is converted to part of the child’s electronic record to participate with others,” continued. “In fact, we create reports that other people can submit. We have designed our reports in a way that can be combined into direct evaluation reports.”
Lipkin emphasizes that Kennedy Krieger does not officially evaluate the child – it’s the beginning. The employees decided to be able to obtain this information from the father, as in pediatrics, where most of the date comes from the father without the need to see the child – knowing the restrictions of the child’s vision.
“From there, the child is directed to the type of specialized services that they will benefit from in the best way,” he explained. “Transfer directly from this video call with the father to these new systems to prepare appointments and care. We also had a basic design before there was a gate by people on the first date, often the doctor.
“The family can wait months before the professional sees it.” “From that visit, it would put an evaluation in other assessments. Therefore, families can wait for the time they are, months, if not, to get the care they need.”
Now, with the beginning Remote Training ProgramEmployees make decisions in advance, all because of the way they were able to integrate the video interview with the electronic record and schedule methodologies now.
results
Kennedy Krieger started starting in February 2024. He took a look at the time it took a child between two and three years old, which is the Start focus, for care.
Before starting, it took 237 days on average, from the time of the first phone call to the time when the child saw a doctor – from eight to nine months until the child was seen.
“These are very young children with parents in distress and they need help and help,” explained to Pipkin. “They often reached some other dates sooner, but even these, it will take four or five months to see some other treatments or some other assessments.
“Therefore, the families of young children were really waiting for a long time, and in fact, we had a bad reputation within society in order to be impossible to obtain children to be seen,” continued. “Therefore, at first, we then cut the time for a medical visit. Compared to 2024 data until 2023, we cut the waiting time for a medical visit from 237 days to 117. From three to four months from the time of that first call.
He added that there is still room for improvement. But cutting four months from the waiting time is a significant improvement.
“We cut the time into two halves for a child waiting for a medical date,” he said. “For non -medical dates, we have made them similarly.
Advice for others
“What we have learned is the amount of what one can accomplish By delivering health care“He emphasized.” This is often just talking to the individual and engaging in that super piece can be very fruitful. People have always been taught in medicine as much as it belongs to the Medical College, and that date is 90 % of your evaluation; Physical examination, and all subsequent tests, perhaps 10 %.
“We are trying to take advantage of 90 % and use health care a distance to try to reach this date,” he said. “Therefore, in our case, we use it as a way to solve our problems with long waiting time and the waiting list. I will tell you, these interviews initially take about 15 or 20 minutes on average. We can do it back. This year, we have done this year more than 500 at this stage, and it was only limited through our employment restrictions.”
Hope is the default of personal visits.
“By combining what one can derive from a distance and history with a more limited personal visit, one may be able to obtain care more efficiently,” and concluded his saying. “For institutions like us, where we have a greater demand than we have employees of this request, we hope that the number of patients who are seen and care will increase.”
Follow Bill Hit coverage on LinkedIn: Bill Seuiki
Email him: [email protected]
Healthcare is Hosz News.
Watch now: The new CDIO from Mount Sinai introduces an inner look at its very full dish
