USE CASE: Assessing the Medical Needs of Children in Colorado After Traumatic Brain Injury
The “Adult and Child Consortium for Health Outcomes Research and Delivery Science” (ACCORDS) was established in 2014, joining two programs that had been highly collaborative for the previous ten years, the Colorado Health Outcomes Program (COHO founded in 1998) and the Children’s Outcomes Research Program (COR founded in 2002). ACCORDS focuses on the entire life spectrum as well as on “delivery science,” encompassing comparative effectiveness, patient-centered outcomes and implementation and dissemination research.
Request Summary: The overall goal of the research team was to improve outcomes for children with traumatic brain injury (TBI) in Colorado and elsewhere. Little is known about the medical needs of children who suffer a TBI, are hospitalized, and return to their community.
The first aim was to create a dataset that contained information about an injured child’s continuum of care, from initial care at a referring hospital to a definitive care hospital to outpatient medical care, rehabilitation care, medication use, and any potential emergency care or hospital readmissions.
The second aim of this project was to use claims data to characterize the functional outcomes of children who survive their initial TBI and are discharged from the hospital back to their community.
Benefit to Colorado: This project could benefit Colorado residents in two ways. First, it could generate information about how injured children are cared for, from initial hospital care to community-based care after hospital discharge. No such comprehensive resource existed, and that resource could help guide decision-making and planning at the state level. Second, it could provide information about the medical needs of children after TBI, which may allow providers and policy-makers to better prepare to meet those needs.