Catherine April Bingham, MD: Pediatric Rheumatology Care and Outcomes Improvement Network Demonstrates Outcome Improvement for Children with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis

Poster Presenter: Catherine April Bingham, MD, Associate Professor, Penn State Children’s Hospital and Penn State College of Medicine. I am presenting this poster on behalf of Pediatric Rheumatology Care and Outcomes Improvement Network (PR-COIN).

Poster Title: Pediatric Rheumatology Care and Outcomes Improvement Network Demonstrates Outcome Improvement for Children with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis

Ignite Session 6A
Sunday, November 13 | 2:10–2:15 p.m. ET | Northern Liberties Stage
All ACR Convergence 2022 poster presentations are available on demand to registered meeting participants through October 31, 2023.

What is your poster about?
Our poster describes how PR-COIN, a Learning Health Network comprised of 24 pediatric rheumatology centers in North America, has demonstrated improvement in patient-reported outcomes and physician-reported outcomes for children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA). PR-COIN teams enter JIA patient data from clinical encounters into a centralized registry, use quality improvement methodologies, and monitor PR-COIN site and aggregate performance on process and outcomes quality measures via statistical process control charts, all with the goal of driving improved outcomes. We have seen patients doing better with respect to JIA disease activity assessments, including clinical JADAS10 (10-joint Juvenile Arthritis Disease Activity Score), clinical inactive disease by ACR provisional criteria, and active joint counts. In addition, there has been improvement in pain, physical function, and patient/parent global assessment of overall well-being.

Why did you decide to investigate this topic?
PR-COIN’s mission is to build a thriving and inclusive community of patients, families, clinical teams, and researchers that uses quality improvement science to deliver exceptional and equitable healthcare to children with rheumatic disease and to bring research discovery to patients faster. In order to know if we are improving, we need to track our performance on quality measures. We have been tracking PR-COIN performance for the past 10 years.

What are you working on next related to this research?
We are promoting and executing self-management support and treat-to-target initiatives, both of which incorporate shared decision-making with families to help promote improvements in outcomes. 

What excites you most about your work?
The idea that we can improve outcomes of care by partnering with families, using quality improvement strategies, and eliminating unwanted variation is exciting. We would like to spread the idea of a Learning Health System as a way to enact change and recruit more centers to join the PR-COIN, so that more patients can benefit.