New Findings from Nationwide Children’s Hospital Describe Advances in Medicare and Medicaid (Partners for Kids Care Coordination: Lessons From the…

New Findings from Nationwide Children's Hospital Describe Advances in Medicare and Medicaid (Partners for Kids Care Coordination: Lessons From the Field)

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Weekly News -- Current study results on Medicare and Medicaid have been published. According to news reporting originating from Columbus, Ohio, by VerticalNews correspondents, research stated, "The goal of this trial was to present a case study of care coordination for children and youth with special health care needs from an exclusively pediatric accountable care organization, and compare precare and postcare data on their use of inpatient and emergency department services. This pre-post comparison of the health care utilization included a subset of 733 children enrolled in Partners for Kids care coordination funded through a delegation arrangement with several Medicaid managed care plans."

Our news editors obtained a quote from the research from Nationwide Children's Hospital, "We compared inpatient admissions, hospital bed days, 30-day hospital readmissions, and emergency department visits during the 6 months before their enrollment in the coordination program versus the 6 months after enrollment. Approximately 16 000 referrals to the Partners for Kids care coordination program were made for an estimated 12 000 children. A total of 3072 unique individual children were enrolled; the most common condition classification was mental, behavioral, and neurodevelopmental disorders (25% of enrolled children). Due to rapid turnover/churn in Medicaid managed care eligibility, the subset of children with continuous enrollment was limited to 733 children. Among this subset, the counts of inpatient admissions, bed days, and 30-day readmissions between the pre-enrollment and post-enrollment period decreased (P <.05). These results suggest that it is possible for an accountable care organization to reduce inpatient and emergency department utilization."

According to the news editors, the research concluded: "Going forward, the most important tasks of the care coordination team are to overcome obstacles to referral and participation and to develop methods to achieve better measures of patient-reported outcomes."

For more information on this research see: Partners for Kids Care Coordination: Lessons From the Field. Pediatrics, 2017;139():35-42. Pediatrics can be contacted at: Amer Acad Pediatrics, 141 North-West Point Blvd, Elk Grove Village, IL 60007-1098, USA. (Elsevier - www.elsevier.com; Pediatrics - www.journals.elsevier.com/pediatrics-and-neonatology/)

The news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting K.J. Kelleher, Nationwide Childrens Hosp, Dept. of Pediat, Columbus, OH 43205, United States. Additional authors for this research include W. Gardner, K. Conkol, K. Pajer and R.C. Weier.

Keywords for this news article include: Columbus, Ohio, United States, North and Central America, Medicare and Medicaid, Managed Care, Health Policy, Pediatrics, Medicaid, Hospital, Nationwide Children's Hospital.

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