Child abuse is a leading cause of death and disability in children. Each year, Child Protective Services, or CPS, receives more than 3 million reports of child abuse. In addition, nearly 1,600 children die from child abuse each year.
What was the goal of this implementation project?
Background: Child maltreatment is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in children. Early identification is critical. Through funding from PCORI, the project team developed a child abuse clinical decision support (CA-CDS) system in the electronic health record (EHR) that helps medical providers identify and evaluate child maltreatment. This system is now used in more than 10 healthcare systems in the United States. The goal is for CA-CDS to be widely available and to decrease morbidity and mortality from child maltreatment.
Chronic pain, which may last for months or even years, can disturb people’s daily lives and their relationships with others. Patient-centered factors, such as patient beliefs and expectations about their pain and how treatments work, can affect how they respond to treatment. Measuring these factors and addressing them in clinic visits can help improve patients’ health.
What was the goal of this implementation project?
Background. Early rehabilitation programs (ERP) that include physical, occupational, and speech therapies lessens debilitation and promotes return to previous physical and cognitive functioning and have been successfully applied in adult intensive care units (ICUs). Despite the fact that critically ill children with acute brain injury (ABI) are at increased risk of life-long disability and stunted development, benefits of ERP for this group have not been studied and are not standard of care in pediatric ICUs.
Child physical abuse is the leading cause of trauma-related death in children younger than 4 years of age in the United States. Many of the children who are injured or die as the result of physical abuse had been previously evaluated by a physician, and the diagnosis of abuse was not recognized. Failure to recognize abuse in its less severe forms can result in repeated abuse and increased morbidity and mortality. Numerous studies demonstrate that physicians fail to consistently screen for abuse in even high-risk situations.
