Assessing Ease of Delivering Emergency Care for Patients with Autism Spectrum Disorders

ABSTRACT: Objective: The aim of this study was to develop a method for objectively assessing the delivery of care to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the emergency department (ED). Methods: A case-control study of patients ages 2 to 18 years admitted to the hospital from January 2016 to January 2018. Cases were defined as patients with an International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision diagnosis of ASD or other pervasive developmental disorder (F84) in their medical record and were matched 1:1 with neurotypical controls. The primary outcome was ability to complete several core tasks clinically necessary within an ED visit and summarized into a Task Completion Index (TCI). Results: Overall, children with ASD had higher median TCIs of 0.25 (interquartile range [IQR] 0–0.45) versus 0 (IQR 0–0.25) when compared with children without ASD (p
Source: Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics - Category: Child Development Tags: Original Article Source Type: research