Primary Care Pathway for Childhood Asthma

University of Alberta

Status: Completed

Conditions: Asthma

Treatments: Other: Primary care clinical pathway; Other: Asthma education; Other: EMR embedded dashboard

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02481037

201400389

Details and patient eligibility

About

At least half of children with asthma have poor disease control, which can result in complications requiring emergency treatment and hospitalization. As asthma is one of the most common reasons for children to visit emergency departments (ED) and be hospitalized, this disease places a heavy burden on the health care system and families. While there is strong evidence that timely treatment with preventative therapies can substantially improve asthma control, reduce sudden worsening of symptoms, and lower rates of ED visits and hospitalizations, a significant proportion of children do not receive these therapies.

The purpose of this study is to improve the prescription and use of evidenced-based preventative therapies for children with asthma with the goal to significantly improve their disease control and quality of life, while reducing unnecessary ED visits and hospitalizations. The investigators will achieve this by: i) installing a primary care clinical pathway for managing childhood asthma into clinicians' electronic medical record (EMR) to facilitate the use of best-evidence by practitioners, and ii) training chronic disease management (CDM) health professionals to provide targeted and timely asthma education to parents and children with asthma. The investigators will test this pathway and education project in a representative sample of 22 Alberta primary care practices, using a pragmatic cluster controlled trial methodology.

Enrollment: 22 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 1 to 17 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Validated diagnosis of asthma according to CPCSSN validated definition

Exclusion criteria

• Children under 1 and over 17 years of age
• Children of parents who have opted out of CPCSSN data collection
• Children with validated asthma who have not attended practices in the last 2 years, or have not received bronchodilator therapy in the last 12 months

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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22 participants in 2 patient groups

Intervention group

Experimental group

Description:

Embedding a primary care clinical pathway for managing childhood asthma into clinicians' electronic medical record (EMR) to facilitate practitioners utilizing best-evidence; training these practices' chronic disease management (CDM) professionals to provide asthma education to children with asthma and their parents; and clinicians receiving an EMR embedded dashboard.

Treatment:

Other: Primary care clinical pathway

Other: EMR embedded dashboard

Other: Asthma education

Control group

No Intervention group

Description:

Practice will continue with routine care. Control group will be offered the intervention at study completion, if successful.