Improving Developmental Screening and Supporting Families with Paid Parent Partners.

This study looked at adding paid parent partners to doctor's offices to help improve screening for developmental delays and autism in young children. Over 9 months, screening rates went up significantly - regular developmental screening increased from 65% to 95%, and autism screening from 75% to 94%. The parent partners helped 292 families connect with community services they needed. The results suggest that having trained parent support in medical practices helps families get better access to services for their children.

This quality improvement project examined the integration of paid parent partners (PPs) into nine pediatric practices across Maryland to improve developmental screening rates and support families with atypical screening results. The 9-month intervention provided training, technical assistance, and part-time PPs to assist with care coordination. Results showed significant improvements: developmental screening rates increased from 65% to 95%, autism-specific screening from 75% to 94%, and appropriate referral rates tripled from 6% to 20%. Parent partners served 292 families through 544 contacts, helping connect families to community services.

The study demonstrates that while quality improvement processes can enhance screening rates, additional resources like trained parent partners are needed to effectively support families in accessing services.

Integrating trained parent partners into pediatric practices appears to be a cost-effective approach to improve developmental screening rates and family access to community services. The model shows promise for addressing barriers between screening and service connection, though broader implementation research is needed to determine scalability and sustainability.

Single quality improvement project without control group. Nine-month timeframe limits long-term outcome assessment. No detailed demographic data or specific outcome measures for families served. Unclear if improvements were sustained beyond the project period. Limited generalizability without replication in diverse settings.

The primary goals of the project were to improve rates of developmental screening and appropriate referral for atypical screens for children from birth to 3 years in participating practices and to integrate parent partners (PPs) into primary care. Parents' Place of Maryland, in collaboration with the Maryland Department of Health, developed a quality improvement project to improve rates of developmental screening, referral, and follow-up. Nine practices from across the state completed the project. Participating practices received training and technical assistance for screening, referral, and data collection as well as a paid part-time PP to assist with care coordination.

Families of children with atypical developmental screening results were offered a referral to receive support in following through with referrals, including needed social services to address health care barriers. Developmental screening rates across practices increased from 65% to 95% during the 9-month project, and autism-specific screening increased from 75% to 94%. Appropriate referral rates tripled from 6% to 20% of children. After an initial learning curve, practices gradually increased referrals to PPs, and they served 292 individual families (total of 544 contacts) over 9 months.

PPs helped families identify a variety of community services to meet their needs. While developmental screening rates can be improved using quality improvement processes, supporting families to connect to services requires additional resources. Integrating trained PPs into pediatric practices improves access to community-based services in a cost-efficient manner. More research is needed to identify the most efficient models for providing this service on a broader scale.