Afraid in the hospital: Parental concern for errors during a child's hospitalization

OBJECTIVE: (1) To determine the proportion of parents concerned about medical errors during a child's hospitalization; and (2) the association between this concern and parental self-efficacy with physician interactions. STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional survey. SETTING: Tertiary care children's hospital. PARTICIPANTS: Parents of children admitted to the general medical service. OUTCOME MEASURE: Parental concern about medical errors. METHODS: Parents were asked their agreement with the statement “When my child is in the hospital I feel that I have to watch over the care that he/she is receiving to make sure that mistakes aren't made.” We used multivariate logistic regression to examine the association between parents' self-efficacy with physician interactions and the need “to watch over a child's care,” adjusting for parent and child demographics, English proficiency, past hospitalization, and social desirability bias. RESULTS: Of 278 eligible parents, 130 completed surveys and 63% reported the need to watch over their child's care to ensure that mistakes were not made. Parents with greater self-efficacy with physician interactions were less likely to report this need (odds ratio [OR], 0.83; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.72-0.92). All parents who were “very uncomfortable” communicating with doctors in English reported the need to watch over their child's care to prevent mistakes. CONCLUSIONS: Nearly two-thirds of surveyed parents felt the need to watch over their child's hospital care to prevent mistakes. Parents with greater self-efficacy with physician interactions were less likely to report the need to watch over their child's care while parents with lower English proficiency were more likely to report this need. Journal of Hospital Medicine 2009;4:521–527. © 2009 Society of Hospital Medicine.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64556/1/508_ftp.pd

A Policy Impact Analysis of the Mandatory NCAA Sickle Cell Trait Screening Program

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90062/1/hesr1357.pd

Institutional variation in ordering complete blood counts for children hospitalized with bronchiolitis This work was presented at the Pediatric Academic Society Meeting, May 2005.

BACKGROUND In the evaluation of infants with bronchiolitis there is little evidence to support the use of diagnostic testing, particularly complete blood counts (CBCs). However, the extent to which CBCs are ordered in the evaluation of infants with bronchiolitis is unknown. OBJECTIVES (1) To determine institutional variability in ordering of initial and repeat CBCs in infants hospitalized with bronchiolitis; (2) to examine the relationship between proportion of admissions with CBCs and mean hospital charges. METHODS We analyzed the Pediatric Health Information System database, which contains demographic and diagnostic data from 30 U.S. children's hospitals. We restricted our analysis to children less than 12 months old with a primary discharge diagnosis of bronchiolitis and an APR-DRG of bronchiolitis/asthma. We performed multivariate ANOVA to examine variability in initial and repeat CBC ordering across hospitals, controlling for potential confounders. We used stratified logistic regression to determine which factors were associated with repeat CBCs. We examined the relationship between proportion of admissions with CBCs and mean hospital charges using t tests. RESULTS 17,397 children were included in the analysis, and 48.2% had at least 1 CBC, whereas 7.8% had more than 1 CBC. The proportion of admissions with initial (23.2%-70.2%) and repeat (0%-18.6%) CBCs varied significantly across hospitals. Compared to those hospitals with the lowest proportion of admissions with CBCs, hospitals with higher proportions of CBCs had significantly higher mean hospital stay charges. CONCLUSIONS Given the potential downstream medical and financial consequences associated with CBC ordering in evaluation of infants with bronchiolitis, explanations for institutional variation warrant exploration. Journal of Hospital Medicine 2007;2:69–73. © 2007 Society of Hospital Medicine.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/56033/1/169_ftp.pd

Clusters of adverse childhood experiences and unmet need for care coordination.

BACKGROUND: The lack of consensus on how to measure ACEs limits our estimation of their impact on health outcomes and understanding of which ACE clusters drive unmet care coordination (CC) needs. OBJECTIVES: 1) Identify latent classes of ACEs among a representative group of U.S. children; 2) Examine the association between these classes and unmet needs for CC. PARTICIPANT AND SETTING: Using the 2016-2017 National Survey of Children’s Health, we sampled children ages 0-17 the who had seen >1 healthcare provider within 12 months (n=38,758). METHODS: We conducted latent class analyses and weighted logistic regression analyses to examine associations between latent classes and unmet need for CC. RESULTS: We identified seven distinct classes: household poverty and parental divorce, household poverty and parental death, household poverty only, household substance abuse and witnessing violence, multiple ACEs, household poverty and child discrimination, and household poverty and household mental illness. Children in the following classes had the greatest odds of unmet need for CC: household poverty only (AOR 2.0; 95% CI, 1.42- 2.84), household poverty and household mental illness (AOR 1.67; 95% CI, 1.15- 2.44), multiple ACEs (AOR 2.31; 95% CI, 1.53- 3.50), and household poverty and child discrimination (AOR 3.55; 95% CI, 1.71-7.37) . CONCLUSIONS: Children who experienced specific combinations of ACEs, have an increased risk of unmet need for CC, with those experiencing both poverty and discrimination having the highest odds of unmet need for CC. Discrimination widens the gap of unmet CC need for poor children