Cincinnati Children's, Nationwide Children's Hospital collaborate to improve ADHD care

Doctors at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and Nationwide Children's Hospital are collaborating to help pediatricians deliver better care to children with ADHD.

While the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has issued evidence-based guidelines and recommendations for ADHD care, most pediatricians have difficulty implementing these guidelines. Investigators at Cincinnati Childrens have developed an intervention called the ADHD Collaborative that focuses on quality improvement methods and innovative tools, such as a web portals, to promote and support the systematic use of AAP-recommended practice guidelines.

The program, which started at Cincinnati Children's in 2004 has been used to train over 200 physicians at 55 practices in the Greater Cincinnati area. Thus far, the program appears to produce 2-to 4-fold increases in the use of evidence-based ADHD-related practices by physicians. The National Institute of Mental Health has awarded a $2.6 million research grant to investigators at Cincinnati Children's and Nationwide Children's in Columbus to assess whether improved ADHD care translates into improved outcomes for patients with ADHD. Beginning this fall, they will recruit 100 physicians and 600 patients from 36 pediatric practices in central Ohio to participate in the program. The program will run through July, 2015.

This research collaboration will fulfill the goals of expanding the program and it will allow the doctors who are involved to determine if their quality improvement intervention translates to better outcomes for patients who have been diagnosed with ADHD.

Kelly Kelleher, MD, MPH, director of the Center for Innovation in Pediatric Practice and vice president of Health Services Research at The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's, explains that he and his colleagues have several expectations for the program. "We are hoping to improve patient outcomes and enhance our collaborations with Cincinnati Children's," he said. "We are also hoping to establish a network of primary care practices that are interested in large scale quality improvement programs."

According to Jeff Epstein, PhD, a psychologist in the Division of Behavioral Medicine and Clinical Psychology at Cincinnati Children's, the program has substantial public health significance. "If the program continues to prove effective, the model has the potential to be implemented at community pediatric practices across the nation, which could potentially improve the ADHD care and outcomes of hundreds of thousands of children nationwide."