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Clinical Innovation: SCAMPs help standardize care and reduce costs

Problem
By 2018, health care expenditures could account for 20 percent of our gross domestic profit. The increase in medical expenditures threatens to outstrip both health benefits and the nation’s capacity to pay.

Pediatric hospital care is inherently costly: Children often can’t tell you what’s wrong, so testing is frequently needed for diagnosis. Clinicians need flexible, evidence-based standards that improve upon often-obsolete clinical practice guidelines and narrowly crafted randomized controlled trials to continually improve care while decreasing overutilization of resources and reducing costs.

Solution
In 2008, to address rising health care utilization costs and a lack of evidence-based data to guide care, the Heart Center at Children’s Hospital Boston introduced Standardized Clinical Assessment and Management Plans (SCAMPs), a quality improvement initiative that collects and analyzes clinical decisions data to standardize care in a fast-evolving clinical environment. To date, 14 SCAMPs have enrolled 2,600 Children’s patients with cardiac conditions such as arterial switch operation (ASO), dilated aorta and chest pain.
The SCAMPs initiative has been supported by Children’s Provider-Payor Quality Initiative, which sees the long-range benefit of accurate, ongoing assessments and refinements of care standards and utilization.

Results

  • Projected one-year cost savings from decreased utilization
    of resources in the ASO SCAMP alone is 16.4 percent.
  • Five SCAMPs have already undergone review and modification based on evaluation and data; two other SCAMPs are currently in review.
  • More than 150 patients at other New England institutions have also been enrolled.
  • SCAMPs will begin institution throughout Children’s by June 2012.

More information: childrenshospital.org/reducingcosts



 
 
 

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