ICOLLAB FOR Children With Medical Complexity

Summary

Background: Children with medical complexity (CMC) have higher hospitalizations and readmissions compared to children without medical complexity. While CMC were institutionalized in the past, increasingly CMCs are now cared for at home. Caring for individuals with disabilities at home, and not congregate care settings is a Healthy People 2020 Objective. Home health nursing, especially good-quality care, is important for CMC. The purpose of this research is to test whether collaboration between home health nurses, primary-care doctors, and the complex care team (a special team at Brenner Children's Hospital that provides care for children with complex chronic medical conditions (CCMC)) can improve the health of these children.

Conditions

• Children With Medical Complexity

Interventions

OTHER

Interagency Collaboration (ICollab)

The intervention has the following components: 1) ICollab Component 1: The Nurse Clinician will review clinic and emergency room (ER) visit notes for clinicians' recommendations and communicate these to the home health nurse (HHN). 2) ICollab Component 2a: The intervention team will meet weekly by phone with HHNs (6 times/ child). The Nurse Clinician will document meeting notes for each child in the ER, communicate this information with the HHN, and share it with the primary care provider (PCP) by routing the note through the ER or faxing the note. 3) ICollab Component 2b: The Nurse Clinician will be available as a resource for the HHN during regular work hours for clinical problem-solving. 4) ICollab Component 2c: the intervention team physician will offer her contact information for clinical problem-solving about the child to the PCP. The Nurse Clinician will communicate with the PCP about the plan developed in the meetings, and changes to plan of care.

OTHER

Usual Care

The primary medical team identifies the need for home health nursing services for Children with Medical Complexity(CMC), and the hospital care coordinators help caregivers choose a home health agency. Hospital-based physicians write home health orders that are communicated to the home health agency. The clinic manager of the home health agency uses these orders to develop the home health plan of care, Centers for Medicare \& Medicaid Services(Form CMS-485) and communicates the plan to the agencies' HHNs. PCPs oversee the home health plan of care.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Wake Forest University Health Sciences

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Savithri Nageswaran, MD · Wake Forest University Health Sciences

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Max Age

17 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2019-11-08

Primary Completion

2023-02-15

Completion

2023-03-15

Countries

• United States

Study Locations