2022 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Virtual Conference
March 13 - 15, 2022
Impact of Covid-19 on Newborn Screening Follow-up in Rhode Island
Approximately 1 to 2 per thousand infants in the United States are born deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) each year. Newborn screening and early diagnosis and referral to early intervention services are key factors in improving the outcomes of children who have congenital hearing loss. The onset of the Covid Pandemic in the US in February 2020 had a significant impact on newborn hearing screen programs in the US. This study reports the impact of Covid-19 on newborn hearing screening and diagnostic follow-up by type of health insurance (private vs. public) as a marker of poverty during the first 12 months of the pandemic.
Results: Overall, there were slight but not significant decreases in completion of rescreens and in receipt of a final diagnosis, post-Covid (March 2020 – April 2021) compared to pre-Covid (January 2019 – February 2020). Patients with private insurance were more likely to complete the rescreen process pre-covid than those with public insurance (p=.02). Post-Covid there was no longer a significant difference (p=.06) between publicly and privately insured infants. In the pre-covid era, there were no significant differences between infants with public or private insurance in the percentage that obtained a final diagnosis. In contrast, in the Covid era, infants with public insurance (54.8%) were significantly (p=.03) less likely to receive a final diagnosis than infants with private insurance (66.4%).
Conclusion: These findings suggest that increased challenges completing the diagnostic process resulting from COVID were greater for lower-resource families, resulting in healthcare disparities. There was no evidence of similar disparities for completion of rescreens. Enhanced supports may decrease future barriers to care.
- Follow-up
- COVID
- Disgnostic
Poster:
3353554_15096EllenAmore.pdf
Presenter: Ellen Amore
Ellen Amore is currently the Manager of KIDSNET, Rhode Island’s Integrated Child Health Information System that contains preventive health care information for Rhode Island children. She is PI on the CDC EHDI Cooperative Agreement. Other programs at the Rhode Island Department of Health that she has managed include Newborn Hearing Screening, Newborn Bloodspot Screening, Newborn Developmental Risk Assessment and home visiting. Her education includes a BA in Human Biology, with a concentration in child development, from Stanford University, and an MS in Maternal and Child Health from the Harvard School of Public Health.
ASHA DISCLOSURE:
Financial -
No relevant financial relationship exist.
Nonfinancial -
No relevant nonfinancial relationship exist.