Promising Results from Lead Initiative
September 7th, 2018 | ArchiveSince its launch in March 2018, AHP’s Lead Testing Initiative has already shown promising results with six months of operation in practices across the network. Our goal for initiative is not only to improve lead screening rates but also to provide education and resources around early detection, intervention and monitoring of every child that has an elevated blood lead level. The more kids being screened increases the likelihood of early detection and appropriate clinical intervention.
As of this September, we have 13 new Family Medicine, Med Peds, and Pediatric practices that have been trained and are currently using point-of-care lead testing. Early adopters have already seen improvement in their screening rate, with one practice seeing a 23% increase in their screening rate. There has been an 18% reduction in network-wide gaps to the 90th percentile and a 5% reduction in total gaps.
The UR Primary Care Network practices are just beginning to roll-out point-of-care lead testing this Fall. Within one year of beginning the Lead Testing Initiative, we project 35 lead analyzers will be in operation across the AHP network in practice settings that had not previously been able to offer point of care testing, and that we will continue to achieve the quality standard metric and elimination of clinically significant lead burden for children.
Questions about the Lead Initiative? Contact Project Manager Meagan Fournier-Boome.
