WVU Medicine Children’s joins national network to improve outcomes for children with inflammatory bowel disease
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – WVU Medicine Children’s has joined the leading learning health system for children in the nation — transforming care, health, and costs for all children and youth with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
The ImproveCareNow Network is working to improve the quality of care delivered to and health of children and youth with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis (also known as Inflammatory Bowel Disease or IBD) at clinic and office visits by initially focusing on building quality improvement infrastructure at each participating center; developing and implementing the recommendations of the ImproveCareNow Model IBD Care Guideline; measuring and reporting performance at each center and all centers; identifying gaps between recommended care and the care actually provided; and implementing quality improvement projects to close the gaps.
“The ImproveCareNow network has proven to be a game changer in pushing improved clinical outcomes to young people with Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis. Our entire Pediatric IBD team is delighted to be joining with the many top centers in the network to collaborate in bringing the highest quality and most up to date care to the kids of West Virginia who courageously face life with IBD,” Brian D. Riedel, M.D., physician leader for the WVU Medicine Children’s ImproveCareNow Center and chief of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition, said. “Our patients and their families will directly benefit from our participation in this important initiative.”
To achieve this success ImproveCareNow centers collect standardized data during all clinic visits, monitor individual and overall performance, compare outcomes, and share the best evidence and tools for helping IBD patients get better faster and stay well longer. Applying an “all teach, all learn” collaborative approach to medicine allows new ideas and best practices to be identified and introduced into the care delivery process much faster — improving care for patients with IBD now.
“We are delighted that WVU Medicine Children’s is joining the ImproveCareNow Network,” Richard Colletti, M.D., president and executive network director for ImproveCareNow, said. “We have no doubt that patients with IBD at WVU Medicine Children’s will experience even more pro-active, reliable, and patient-centered care and increased clinical remission rates.”
As of September 2016, ImproveCareNow centers have achieved their target of 81 percent remission for patients with IBD in the Network.
ImproveCareNow has the largest and fastest growing pediatric IBD health registry worldwide and is the only learning health network focused on improving outcomes for children and youth with IBD.
ImproveCareNow began in 2007 as a quality improvement collaborative of eight participating centers. It has now expanded to include more than 100 care centers in 39 states and the District of Columbia, the United Kingdom, Qatar, and Belgium. Together these centers are focused on transforming health, care, and costs for all children and adolescents with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
More information about ImproveCareNow is available at improvecarenow.org.
WVU Medicine Children’s – currently located on the sixth floor of J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital, WVU Medicine’s flagship hospital – provides maternal, infant, and pediatric care for West Virginia and the surrounding region, giving care to high-risk mothers, premature infants, and children with life-threatening conditions through adolescence to adulthood. In 2020, WVU Medicine Children’s will move into a new, eight-story tower and three-story ambulatory care center to be attached to Ruby Memorial. For more information, including ways to support the $60-million capital campaign for Children’s new home, visit www.wvumedicine.org/childrens.