2007-05-08 17:12:29 -
WELLESLEY, Mass. and NEW YORK, May 8 /PRNewswire/ -- A new online health resource for families is being tested in the U.S. for its impact on improving child health while reducing costs. The Child Health Guide [CHG] (http://www.childhealthguide.com/), developed by MultiMedicus (NY) in cooperation with pediatricians from Harvard and Dartmouth Medical Schools, is the only online health guide that uses live-action video of real children with real symptoms and illnesses.
The test is being conducted by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care (http://www.harvardpilgrim.org/), a leading health insurer based in Wellesley, MA,
with more than one million members. Several hundred families in the Boston area are participating in the year-long test.
Researchers are expecting that the addition of live-action video to health information for parents will yield significant benefits to children's health while reducing costs. Earlier studies measuring the impact of providing print-based health information indicated significant health benefits and savings.
That study, conducted by UCLA's Anderson School of Management and Johnson & Johnson found that when parents are better educated, they used the emergency room 48 percent fewer times, saving $114 per family.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service, in 2004, fully 28 percent of all children under the age of six used the emergency room. Fifty-eight percent of those visits were not emergencies. The cost of those non-emergent visits - just for children under the age of six - exceeds $800 million annually. [1] Those figures are being compiled for 2006, but are expected to rise.
"When parents are better informed, they can better recognize serious symptoms and seek professional help before complications arise. Similarly, no one likes to rush a child to the emergency room when it is not really an emergency. Giving parents better tools and insight is what the Child Health Guide is all about," said Judith Frampton, RN, vice president of Medical Management for Harvard Pilgrim. "We believe we will see healthier kids, less anxious parents and lower inappropriate emergency room usage as a result of this initiative."
The "inappropriate" use of the emergency room by parents is a significant and costly problem that crosses economic lines. Among middle and upper middle class families, the incidence of ER use was 11 percent annually among children under six - but 52 percent of those visits were deemed non-emergent by health professionals.
The cost of each of those non-emergent visits is estimated at $200 per visit. Companies and insurers bear the burden of those visits, incurring some $340 million in costs. Another $3.4 billion is lost annually by companies due to worker absenteeism due to unexpected child care needs, many of them health related.
Dr. Lars Petter Skranes, the Norwegian co-creator of the CHG, described the product's inception: "We saw many parents visit the doctor's office or the emergency room with their children and heard them say, 'I read about the symptom in a book or on the Internet, but I still wasn't sure if what they were describing matched my child's symptoms.' We determined that showing parents, via sight, sound and motion, using real children, would have a greater impact."
Skranes notes that 80 percent of all American adults now use the Internet for health-related information, up from 72 percent in 2005
The CHG is unlike any other resource in that it features more than 100 video clips ranging from 30 seconds in length to almost four minutes. In addition, there are dozens of animations, focusing particularly on first aid, and hundreds of still photographs and text covering all the common childhood illnesses.
"We thought about our end user as the worried, harassed parent who, at 11:00 p.m., has a child crying, probably with a fever and perhaps another symptom," said Steve Cohen, CEO of MultiMedicus, developer of the Child Health Guide. "What does Mom - and more frequently Dad - do? Does she give the child Tylenol and keep an eye on the child until the morning? Does she call the doctor and hope the doctor calls back at a reasonable hour? Or does she take the child to the emergency room? We want to give her a tool she can trust and that will help her make a more informed decision. The Child Health Guide can even help her better describe the child's symptoms to the nurse or doctor when Mom does get them on the phone. And that helps the doctor."
"The CHG is not a substitute for a physician's care," notes Dr. Henry H. Bernstein, D.O., Chief of the Section of General Academic Pediatrics at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and consultant to MultiMedicus. "Rather, CHG is intended to be a helpful, informative resource on common symptoms and illnesses that affect children and is not intended to be an all-inclusive diagnostic tool."
The Child Health Guide is available online at http://www.childhealthguide.com/.
Source: MultiMedicus NY
