Rhonda G. Cady

A Medical Home Center: Specializing in the Care of Children with Special Health Care Needs of High Intensity

Objective Children with special health care needs (CSHCN) benefit from a medical home, however, a subset, those children with high intensity needs, have medical and social service issues beyond the capacity of most primary care practices. We describe a novel medical home center that is designed to meet the needs of children with special health care needs of high intensity (CSHCN-HI). Model of care The medical home center, U Special Kids (USK) is located at the University of Minnesota and affiliated with a tertiary medical center. USK serves CSHCN-HI throughout the state of Minnesota and, because of state supported funding for the program, children have access to the program regardless of their health insurance coverage. The team is expert at gathering an overall perspective of the child’s needs, identifying gaps, accessing services and weaving together the plethora of disparate services, agencies and providers. A major goal of this model is to transition care from USK to a primary care medical home within the child’s community. Transition is more likely to occur optimally once the child’s complex needs are organized, the family is trained, adequate management resources are in place, and the intensity of care coordination needs are reduced. Conclusions We propose that, in addition to a primary care medical home, CSHCN-HI benefit from a unique medical home center that can provide sufficient resources and expertise to organize their complex care coordination needs. Medical home centers, designed specifically to manage the care of children with complex high intensity medical and care coordination needs, have the potential to reduce excess health care utilization and improve patient outcomes by providing this group of children with customized, accessible and integrated services.

Care Coordination for Children With Complex Special Health Care Needs: The Value of the Advanced Practice Nurse's Enhanced Scope of Knowledge and Practice

Efficiency and effectiveness of care coordination depends on a match between the needs of the population and the skills, scope of practice, and intensity of services provided by the care coordinator. Existing literature that addresses the relevance of the advanced practice nurse (APN) role as a fit for coordination of care for children with special health care needs (SHCN) is limited. The objective of this article is to describe the value of the APNs enhanced scope of knowledge and practice for relationship-based care coordination in health care homes that serve children with complex SHCN. The TeleFamilies project is provided as an example of the integration of an APN care coordinator in a health care home for children with SHCN.

A telehealth nursing intervention reduces hospitalizations in children with complex health conditions

The U Special Kids Program (USK) at the University of Minnesota provides care coordination and case management services by telephone to children with special health-care needs. We measured the effect of the USK programme on hospital resource utilization using a retrospective record review. Information on hospitalizations was collected for children enrolled in the programme for at least two years and validated for accuracy against inpatient claims data. Hospitalizations were classified as planned, unplanned or due to lack of home care. A total of 43 children enrolled in the USK programme between July 1996 and December 2006 met the study criteria. The children had multiple, complex conditions. During the period of the study, there were 61 planned hospitalizations, 184 unplanned hospitalizations and 3 hospitalizations due to lack of home care. The number of unplanned hospitalizations decreased from 74 in the first year of enrolment to 35 in the second; this reduction was significant (P < 0.007). In the subsequent years, the rate of unplanned admissions stabilized. In contrast, the rate of planned hospitalizations was relatively constant over the five-year enrolment period. Telephone-based care coordination and case management is a promising approach for children with multiple, complex health conditions.

Home telehealth for children with special health-care needs.

Summary The U Special Kids (USK) programme at the University of Minnesota provides intensive care coordination and case management services to children with complex special health-care needs. We conducted a one-year pilot study to evaluate the feasibility of videoconferencing between the USK office and family homes. To ensure easy installation, families were provided with prepackaged equipment and software. However, the families had different Internet providers, different modems and/or routers and different firewall software, which required case-by-case resolution during home visits by the project coordinator. Five families participated in 3–5 videoconferencing sessions with a USK nurse. All connections with urban families had clear audio and video, whereas connections with rural families had clear audio, but unclear video. All of the scheduled virtual visits were rated by nurses as providing information that was similar to a telephone call. However, the unscheduled virtual visits were rated by the nurses as providing more information than a telephone call, suggesting that home-based videoconferencing may be useful in the management of children with complex special health-care needs.

Meeting the Needs of Children with Medical Complexity Using a Telehealth Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Care Coordination Model

Effective care coordination is a key quality and safety strategy for populations with chronic conditions, including children with medical complexity (CMC). However, gaps remain in parent report of the need for care coordination help and receipt of care coordination help. New models must close this gap while maintaining family-centered focus. A three-armed randomized controlled trial conducted in an established medical home utilized an advanced practice registered nurse intervention based on Presler’s model of clinic-based care coordination. The model supported families of CMC across settings using telephone only or telephone and video telehealth care coordination. Effectiveness was evaluated from many perspectives and this paper reports on a subset of outcomes that includes family-centered care (FCC), need for care coordination help and adequacy of care coordination help received. FCC at baseline and end of study showed no significant difference between groups. Median FCC scores of 18.0–20.0 across all groups indicated high FCC within the medical home. No significant differences were found in the need for care coordination help within or between groups and over time. No significant difference was found in the adequacy of help received between groups at baseline. However, this indicator increased significantly over time for both intervention groups. These findings suggest that in an established medical home with high levels of FCC, families of CMC have unmet needs for care coordination help that are addressed by the APRN telehealth care coordination model.

Meaningful use of data in care coordination by the advanced practice RN: the TeleFamilies project.

Meaningful use of electronic health records to coordinate care requires skillful synthesis and integration of subjective and objective data by practitioners to provide context for information. This is particularly relevant in the coordination of care for children with complex special healthcare needs. The purpose of this article is to present a conceptual framework and example of meaningful use within an innovative telenursing intervention to coordinate care for children with complex special healthcare needs. The TeleFamilies intervention engages an advanced practice nurse in a full-time care coordinator role within an existing hospital-based medical home for children with complex special healthcare needs. Care coordination is facilitated by the synthesis and integration of internal and external data using an enhanced electronic health record and telehealth encounters via telephone and videoconferencing between the advanced practice nurse and the family at home. The advanced practice nurse’s ability to maintain an updated plan of care that is shared across providers and systems and build a relationship over time with the patient and family supports meaningful use of these data.

Exploring the Translational Impact of a Home Telemonitoring Intervention Using Time-Motion Study

OBJECTIVE Home telemonitoring improves clinical outcomes but can generate large amounts of data. Automating data surveillance with clinical decision support could reduce the impact of translating these systems to clinical settings. We utilized time-motion methodology to measure the time spent on activities monitoring subjects in the two groups of a home spirometry telemonitoring randomized controlled trial: the manual nurse review (control) group and the automated review (intervention) group. These results are examined for potential workflow effects that could occur when the intervention translates to a clinical setting. MATERIALS AND METHODS Time motion is an established industrial engineering technique used to evaluate workflow by measuring the time of predefined, discrete tasks. Data were collected via direct observation of two research nurses by a single observer using the repetitive or snap-back timing method. All observed tasks were coded using a list of work activities defined and validated in an earlier study. Reliability data were collected during a 2-h session with a secondary observer. RESULTS Reliability of the primary observer was established. During 35 h of data collection, a sample of 938 task observations were recorded and coded using 46 previously defined and 5 newly defined work activities. Between-group comparisons of activity time for subjects in the two study groups showed significantly more time spent on data review activities for the automated review group. Reclassification of the 51 observed activities identified 15 activities that would translate to a clinical setting, of which 5 represent potentially new activities. CONCLUSIONS Implementing an intervention into a clinical setting could add work activities to the clinical workflow. Time-motion study of research personnel working with new clinical interventions provides a template for evaluating the workflow impact of these interventions prior to translation from a research to a clinical setting.

Effects of a Telehealth Care Coordination Intervention on Perceptions of Health Care by Caregivers of Children With Medical Complexity: A Randomized Controlled Trial

INTRODUCTION The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of advanced practice registered nurse (APRN) telehealth care coordination for children with medical complexity (CMC) on family caregiver perceptions of health care. METHOD Families with CMC ages 2 to 15 years (N = 148) were enrolled in a three-armed, 30-month randomized controlled trial to test the effects of adding an APRN telehealth care coordination intervention to an existing specialized medical home for CMC. Satisfaction with health care was measured using items from the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey at baseline and after 1 and 2 years. RESULTS The intervention was associated with higher ratings on measures of the childs provider, provider communication, overall health care, and care coordination adequacy, compared with control subjects. Higher levels of condition complexity were associated with higher ratings of overall health care in some analyses. DISCUSSION APRN telehealth care coordination for CMC was effective in improving ratings of caregiver experiences with health care and providers. Additional research with CMC is needed to determine which children benefit most from high-intensity care coordination.

Mixed Methods Approach for Measuring the Impact of Video Telehealth on Outpatient Clinic Triage Nurse Workflow

Nurse-delivered telephone triage is a common component of outpatient clinic settings. Adding new communication technology to clinic triage has the potential to not only transform the triage process but also alter triage workflow. Evaluating the impact of new technology on an existing workflow is paramount to maximizing the efficiency of the delivery system. This study investigated triage nurse workflow before and after the implementation of video telehealth using a sequential mixed-methods protocol that combined ethnography and time-motion study to provide a robust analysis of the implementation environment. Outpatient clinic triage using video telehealth required significantly more time than telephone triage did, indicating a reduction in nurse efficiency. Despite the increased time needed to conduct video telehealth, nurses consistently rated it useful in providing triage. Interpretive analysis of the qualitative and quantitative data suggests that the increased depth and breadth of data available during video triage alter the assessment that triage nurses provide physicians. This in turn could affect the time physicians spend formulating a diagnosis and treatment plan. While the immediate impact of video telehealth is a reduction in triage nurse efficiency, what is unknown is the impact of video telehealth on physician and overall clinic efficiency. Future studies should address this area.

Task–Technology Fit of Video Telehealth for Nurses in an Outpatient Clinic Setting

BACKGROUND Incorporating telehealth into outpatient care delivery supports management of consumer health between clinic visits. Task-technology fit is a framework for understanding how technology helps and/or hinders a person during work processes. Evaluating the task-technology fit of video telehealth for personnel working in a pediatric outpatient clinic and providing care between clinic visits ensures the information provided matches the information needed to support work processes. MATERIALS AND METHODS The workflow of advanced practice registered nurse (APRN) care coordination provided via telephone and video telehealth was described and measured using a mixed-methods workflow analysis protocol that incorporated cognitive ethnography and time-motion study. Qualitative and quantitative results were merged and analyzed within the task-technology fit framework to determine the workflow fit of video telehealth for APRN care coordination. RESULTS Incorporating video telehealth into APRN care coordination workflow provided visual information unavailable during telephone interactions. Despite additional tasks and interactions needed to obtain the visual information, APRN workflow efficiency, as measured by time, was not significantly changed. Analyzed within the task-technology fit framework, the increased visual information afforded by video telehealth supported the assessment and diagnostic information needs of the APRN. CONCLUSIONS Telehealth must provide the right information to the right clinician at the right time. Evaluating task-technology fit using a mixed-methods protocol ensured rigorous analysis of fit within work processes and identified workflows that benefit most from the technology.