2023 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference
March 5-7, 2023 • Cincinnati, OH
2/28/2017 | 10:10 AM - 10:40 AM | Monitoring and Managing Infant Diagnostic Testing at Boston Children's Hospital | Hanover D
Monitoring and Managing Infant Diagnostic Testing at Boston Children's Hospital
Boston Children's Hospital sees approximately 25% of Massachusetts' referring infants for diagnostic testing. These infants may be seen at one of 5 regional centers for their hearing assessment. Last year, we developed a computerized system to track this specific population of patients. This system was built on the Microsoft SharePoint platform. SharePoint is a collaborative on-premises system allowing for secure sharing of content, documents, calendars, and other data. Using this system we were able to better monitor wait times for testing between time of scheduling from the birth center to the diagnostic ABR. This led to adjustments in the availability of ABR slots. Over a six month period we were able to reduce the average wait time from 34 days to 20 days. We also used this system to uncover trends related to a number of variables, such as referral sources, referral reason, testing audiologist and site, and test results. For example, among infants who referred a newborn hearing screening, 41% were bilateral refers, 31% referred in the left ear, and 28% referred in the right ear. During that same period we tested infants from 26 birth hospitals, with 5 hospitals accounting for 75% of those referrals. Among those five hospitals, bilateral refers accounted for between 10% and 56% of their total referrals. We received an average of 70 referrals per month. Depending on site, between 4 and 40 ABRs were scheduled per month. Twelve percent of unilateral refers demonstrated sensorineural hearing loss whereas 38% of bilateral refers demonstrated sensorineural hearing loss. This system has improved our ability to evaluate various aspects of our infant diagnostic program. We hope this project inspires other centers to develop data management approaches for their own populations.
- describe the challenges to infant diagnostics at a large pediatric medical center
- develop approaches to managing infant care at their own medical center
- model the use of data management software to evaluate wait times and analyze trends in referrals and results
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Presenters/Authors
Derek Stiles
(), Boston Children's Hospital, derek.stiles@childrens.harvard.edu;
Derek Stiles has been Director of Audiology at Boston Children's Hospital since 2014, and Director of the Center for Communication Enhancement since 2021. He leads a team of 30 audiologists, serving 20,000 patients a year across 6 clinical sites in Eastern Massachusetts. He also oversees the directors of the SLP, Feeding & Swallowing, Augmentative Communication, Autism Language, Deaf & Hard-of-Hearing, and Balance Programs at Boston Children's Hospital.
ASHA DISCLOSURE:
Financial -
• Receives Salary for Employment,Management position from Boston Children's Hospital.
Nonfinancial -
No relevant nonfinancial relationship exist.