Asthma is the most common chronic disease of childhood resulting in millions of school absences in the United States each year. New England leads the nation in numbers of documented cases of asthma and also in number of missed school days due to asthma symptoms.
The healthcare providers at Wareham Pediatrics participate in several Quality Improvement initiatives in collaboration with the Pediatric Physicians Organization at Children’s (PPOC) to enhance the proactive management of asthma symptoms in our patients. To achieve this, we monitor the number of emergency room visits for our patients with asthma as well as the number albuterol prescriptions filled to identify people who would benefit from asthma controller medications.
In addition, we are able to perform lung function testing in our asthmatic patients (spirometry) to identify patients with decreased lung function as an additional indication for the need of asthma controller medications.
We recommend influenza vaccination for ALL of our asthmatic patients and our healthcare team monitors compliance with this, to ensure that every patient has the opportunity to receive this important preventive measure. Lastly, we give an asthma action plan to all of our asthmatic patients who require controller medications so that parents will have written instructions on the use of their children’s asthma medications.