Researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia recently uncovered what they called a “leaky pipeline” of follow-up care for children with head trauma.
An analysis using CHOP’s Minds Matter Registry — the nation’s largest pediatric concussion registry — showed disparities across sequential follow-up care stages, according to a March 25 hospital news release. The researchers published their findings March 20 in Pediatrics.
Among approximately 23,000 pediatric patients in the registry, 5,998 received a concussion diagnosis at an emergency department, 1,142 were referred to specialty care and only 504 attended a specialty visit. Across the three stages — diagnosis, referral and visit — the researchers found disparities among different ages, races, ethnicities, insurance statuses and the overall Child Opportunity Index.
“We identified a ‘leaky pipeline of injury,’ with multiple increasing disparities present at each juncture along the healthcare journey of children with head trauma,” the researchers concluded. “Although our findings are specific to head injury, this study likely applies to other injuries and disease processes in the pediatric population, helping to identify key targets for future interventions.”
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