Web System for Engaging Families and Doctors in Continuous Asthma Quality Improveme

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Asthma affects 8% of US children and is a leading cause of ED visits, hospitalization, missed school, suffering and death. It disproportionately affects low income minorities. This proposal seeks to overcome health caredelivery barriers to implementation of national asthma guidelines - both clinician failures to provide guideline based care and patient adherence when appropriate treatments are offered. This project will develop and then test effectiveness of an innovative web-based decision support system (CHADIS) to support teaming doctors and patients in parallel processes of continuous quality improvement of asthma care for doctors and engagement of parents and children in their own care. CHADIS engages parents in completing pre-visit questionnaires, which trigger patient specific decision support for doctors for use in the visit. Patients will complete the Pediatric Asthma Control and Communication Instrument (PACCI), a questionnaire of asthma symptoms recently validated across a range of demographics by one of the co-investigators, online via CHADIS pre-visit and between visits. Doctor interaction with CHADIS decision support during the visit results in both documentation for recertification credit and triggering of individualized parent education to appear in an enticing website for each child called the Memory Book/Care Portal. Patient adherence is addressed through Problem Solving Counseling by the clinician prompted by the pre-visit data on symptoms and barriers. Patients also are provided tailored default messages and alerts in the Care Portal which can also be monitored by a remote coach. Monitoring of asthma symptoms between visits is expected and CHADIS uses multiple forms of automated communication (texting, email, and phone) to prompt completion of the PACCI. In addition, parents are encouraged to do questionnaires through multimodal reinforcements including: the Memory Book, coupons for free products and gamification i.e. entertaining videos and quiz games for individualized patient education. In Phase I the system is built with professional and patient feedback and piloting and presented to medical specialty boards for formal QI MOC certification. In Phase II the system is further refined and then tested foreffectiveness in improving asthma control by a large intervention study using a cluster randomized control design. The Phase III product will have market value as it improves and documents care for Quality Improvement, Maintenance of Certification credit,meaningful use, clinical quality measurement, pay for performance and Medical Home efforts. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Asthma affects 8% of US children and is a leading cause of ED visits, hospitalization, missed school, suffering and death, disproportionately affecting low income minorities. This proposal seeks to overcome health care delivery barriers to implementation of national asthma guidelines by developing and then testing effectiveness of an innovative Asthma Module product in a web-based decision support system (CHADIS) to support teaming doctors and patients in parallel processes of continuous quality improvement of asthma care. Patients will complete the Pediatric Asthma Control and Communication Instrument (PACCI) online via CHADIS pre- visit and between visits; clinicians will use tailored decision support specific to PACCI results for Problem Solving Counseling during the visit; and results will trigger individualized alerts and gamified patient education to appear in an enticing website for each child called the Memory Book/Care Portal which can also be monitored by remote coaches.