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Asthma Best Management Tips
EPA sponsors an annual EPA's Communities in Action National Asthma Forum to help asthma health providers improve treatment programs and asthma management goals.
Seton Asthma Center is the recipient of the 2009 EPA National Environmental Leadership Award in Asthma Management. Seton Asthma Center, in Austin, Texas, strives for three goals every day:
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to keep children from having to enter our hospital doors;
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to reduce the number of children readmitted to our facilities; and
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to keep children out of the emergency room (ER).
Alarming numbers of ER visits and readmission rates for pediatric asthma patients in their community made them begin to question their methods: Where were their gaps? What could they enhance?
And more importantly, how could they better serve their community?
"In short, we wanted to understand how to better provide comprehensive asthma management to the children we treated to improve their quality of life. We took this opportunity to evaluate our programmatic goals and activities to determine how we could achieve the results that would align with our goals of improving asthma health outcomes," says Steve Conti.
After implementing new strategies, including how they conducted asthma education outreach to families, they started to see fewer children returning to the ER. However, in order to determine if they achieved success, they really needed to measure results.
To do so, they tracked patients’ doctor and ER visits for one year, as well as had patients’ complete quality of life assessments. Coupling this information with their previous year’s medical history allowed us to do a comparative evaluation of each child’s condition.
The results were amazing.
"We saw an almost 50 percent decline in ER visits, a 90 percent decrease in patient visits and a positive return on investment – for every dollar we spent on program expenses, we were able to demonstrate a $5 return."
Conti would highly encourage any asthma management program that is interested in learning more about evaluation and how to articulate their program’s story to attend the upcoming EPA’s Communities in Action National Asthma Forum, June 9-10, 2011, in Washington, D.C. It’s an inspiring event that helps programs promote healthier, happier lives for their patients, and provides an opportunity to meet national experts in asthma care.
Seton Asthma Center is the recipient of the 2009 EPA National Environmental Leadership Award in Asthma Management.
Edited by Carolyn Allen, Managing Editor of Solutions For Green
Publication Date:
6/4/2011
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