Pallavi Ranade-Kharkar

Information needs of physicians, care coordinators, and families to support care coordination of children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN)

Objectives Identify and describe information needs and associated goals of physicians, care coordinators, and families related to coordinating care for medically complex children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN). Materials and Methods We conducted 19 in-depth interviews with physicians, care coordinators, and parents of CYSHCN following the Critical Decision Method technique. We analyzed the interviews for information needs posed as questions using a systematic content analysis approach and categorized the questions into information need goal types and subtypes. Results The Critical Decision Method interviews resulted in an average of 80 information needs per interview. We categorized them into 6 information need goal types: (1) situation understanding, (2) care networking, (3) planning, (4) tracking/monitoring, (5) navigating the health care system, and (6) learning, and 32 subtypes. Discussion and Conclusion Caring for CYSHCN generates a large amount of information needs that require significant effort from physicians, care coordinators, parents, and various other individuals. CYSHCN are often chronically ill and face developmental challenges that translate into intense demands on time, effort, and resources. Care coordination for CYCHSN involves multiple information systems, specialized resources, and complex decision-making. Solutions currently offered by health information technology fall short in providing support to meet the information needs to perform the complex care coordination tasks. Our findings present significant opportunities to improve coordination of care through multifaceted and fully integrated informatics solutions.

Analysis of Family Health History Based Risk Assessment Algorithms: Classification and Data Requirements

Family Health History (FHH) is a valuable and potentially low-cost tool for risk assessment and diagnosis in patient-centered healthcare. In this study, we identified and analyzed existing FHH-based risk assessment algorithms (RAAs) for cardio-vascular disease (CVD) and colorectal cancer (CRC) to guide implementers of electronic health record (EHR) systems regarding the data requirements for computing risk using these algorithms. We found a core set of data elements that are required by most RAAs. While some of these data are available in EHR systems, the patients can be empowered to contribute the remainder.