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And I am joined by Kate Gamble, managing editor here at This Week Health. Kate, welcome to the show. Thank you Sarah.

And this was a study conducted by researchers from prominent children's hospitals, including Ann and Robert, Children's Hospital of Chicago and Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, both facilities where we have 229 community Members. Kate, what happens from the CIO's perspective in this scenario?

Yeah, this is actually really a scary thing to read. But I do want to start off by saying that anytime I've spoken with anyone from a children's hospital, the first thing they talk about is the mission. And if you listen to our keynotes, had Keith Perry recently from St. Jude's. We've had Tanya Townsend from Stanford Children's and so many others, and they are so passionate about the critical role that children's hospitals play in caring for both patients and families.

So to hear about the decline in pediatric units is disturbing. This is where CIOs can play a key role by leveraging IT. CIOs can enhance care coordination, optimize resource allocation, and implement telehealth solutions to extend care access in underserved areas. And investing in data analytics can help predict patient surges and manage capacity effectively, ensuring that patients receive timely and efficient care.

You mentioned the Start over. You mentioned Keith Antonio's examples. Heck, I'm going to be in Seattle with Zephyr and some others, and we have an entire summit that is just Children's Hospital CIOs. That's how passionate they are about being together to share their ideas and to share their perspectives and make sure they're constantly learning from one another because this presents major challenges for patient access, care coordination, health system efficiency.

And when you can look at some of these systemic causes, the impact on care and even innovation for that perspective, then the healthcare leaders, the CIOs, policymakers, clinicians, they can implement and coordinate this together so that even if there's a drop in availability, it doesn't necessarily have to limit the ability to gain access to the care that the patient may need.

And this is where telehealth plays such a key role. It can help fill the gap left by these declining pediatric inpatient units, helping to provide virtual consultations, triage care, and ensure timely interventions. And in, in terms of scaling, in terms of scaling telehealth for pediatric emergency care, that involves Using te Oh, shoot.

Start that bullet point

So emergency departments need to be able to use telehealth for rapid pediatric specialist consultations to avoid unnecessary transfers, which can really be a burden if you're talking about, hundreds of miles, which is sometimes the case. And in terms of insurance and reimbursement, which we talked about the other day, what are the financial and policy telehealth for pediatric care?

And on the parent side, hospitals need to encourage parents to embrace remote pediatric consultations when they're accustomed to in person visits, which isn't always easy to do. Although there's not a mom that I have spoken with, doesn't know when their kid has pink eye and they just need a prescription.

And that telemedicine visit as an example is instead of having to get my kid into the facility where they're infectious from the pink eye perspective, you're like, Hey, I just need this. And it's been a win on telemedicine and some of the fronts and some of the physicians I've spoken with as well as like most moms know what, the first five or six things are that may be.

Happening with their child and that telemedicine visit can be a huge win versus, and if you've got more than one kid at home, having to bring the whole brood into the office, but that's where you need to have the right decision making to predict and manage pediatric care needs. So let's just say that you do have an admit, what can a hospital use such as machine learning to predict surges in pediatric admissions and also adjust staffing and bed availability.

And you don't want to overcrowd your emergency department can real time analytics help reduce and reroute pediatric cases to a better facility or something that's more appropriate until they reach critical overload. That's a huge one when I think about especially if you have children in the E. D. or you've got a busy urban location, you've got to think of ways to help direct traffic for lack of a better term to the right location so that you're not diverting if you have an overcrowded.

Scenario on the happen before they get to your facility and when hospitals can create regional pediatric data sharing networks, track available beds, staffing, surge capacity. This is where you see cities come together, and it's what I love about our city tour dinners as we hear the CIOs collaborating with what they need to be able to do locally to support one another if there's an event or if there is a surge capacity.

And then we talk about AI a lot, but there's enough operational tools out there that are available to look at resources across your pediatric and general units. So you can also adapt to some of these care needs that are more nuanced by staffing availability, seasonality, et cetera. Yeah. You made such a good point before, by the way, about the parents.

Cause I can remember during COVID holding my son's foot up to a phone to show the pediatrician and, get some more information on what this is before you needed to go anywhere. So yeah, that, that's really, that really is important and should be just a key part of this. But you talked about collaboration between hospitals and that's something that really needs to happen, especially smaller hospitals that can partner with larger pediatric centers.

to develop these regionalized care models and ensure faster transfers and resource sharing. And when transports are necessary, it's important that I, it's important to have enhanced coordination between those hospitals. And as far as digital referrals, as far as referrals, are those digital referral platforms in place?

And are we using AI driven triage tools to be able to connect pediatric patients with the right specialists, which can make an enormous difference? Tele consultation has become so important, especially when you have community hospitals that are using telemedicine to get real time consults from pediatric specialists at those larger facilities.

Brings up a larger point though, is like, why are pediatric units? Closing like the declining pediatric unit profitability, many hospitals site low reimbursement rates is key reasons for shuttering pediatric units, but there's policy changes that are needed to make pediatric more financially sustainable.

In some cases, Medicaid's role in pediatric funding, Medicaid covers 40 percent of us children and policymakers have to ensure that reimbursement rates for pediatric care remain competitive. You also have advocacy for pediatric care investments. What can healthcare executives, CIOs, hospital administrators do to advocate for stronger state and federal support for pediatric hospital services?

That goes back into that local advocacy, that local awareness of what's happening in your market, your Count your state, etcetera. There are opportunities for public private partnerships for pediatric care expansion either it's philanthropy tech partnership public grants that help hospitals fund pediatric care programs.

That with a lot of the names of the Children's hospitals that are in our 229 community and beyond, where they have a substantial amount of philanthropic funding to keep these care programs running, as well as the ability to be. The best at what they do in many cases, such as a St. Jude's. Yeah, St.

Jude's is such a unique organization, but unfortunately, a lot of other organizations don't have that same model. These families have to cope with things like increased travel times, with their own resources. They, and low income families may lack the transportation, childcare, or ability to take time off of work.

And no matter what your economic status, Dealing with longer wait times and transfer delays can affect early intervention, and that's the last thing you want to see happen. Really have to think about, the psychological impact on families, too, and when you have to travel further, or you have to be separated due to hospital transfers.

One thing we did see recently that I think, is important is that North Carolina is going to have their first freestanding children's hospital. And it's such a great thing to hear, especially in light of, some of the stories we've been covering. And the goal with UNC Health is partnering with Duke.

And the goal is to address those delays in referrals for pediatric patients and, improve access to care. for those for kids in that state. So that is like a really good beacon of hope in this. But still, this is such a serious issue that needs to be a priority. It does. And for the CIO and healthcare leaders, that decline or this decline of pediatric inpatient units, it's multifactor.

Start over, Sarah. The decline of the pediatric inpatient units, it's multifaceted and it's challenged. Thinking about requiring strategic planning, policy reform, technology innovation, while clinical and operational teams handle direct patient care. CIOs and IT leaders can drive these digital solutions.

You can expand telehealth access where it's available and appropriate. Leverage your data analytics for capacity management. Strengthen those collaborative hospital networks, be an advocate for policy change that can sustain pediatric services and support families with patient navigation and social services technology, meeting the patient where they are, whether that's culturally from a language perspective, from how they'd like to receive care to the fact that you may be splitting up families for them to access this care, that support mechanism is going to be as important as any other aspect of what we've covered

Yeah, absolutely. And you just think about it. Any health issues that we have that gets multiplied infinitely when you're talking about a child. So it's so important to keep all of these things top of mind. It is. And we'll revisit that for sure. Since people in our organization, such as Brent lamb sharing UNC and Duke children's hospital.

Kate, thanks for joining me. And remember to share this podcast with a friend or a colleague. Use it as a foundation for daily or weekly discussions on the topics that are relevant to you and the industry. They can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.