Improving Developmental Screening Rates in San Bernardino County

About the Program

Category: Children and Youth (Best in Category)

Year: 2020

San Bernardino County Department of Public Health (SBCDPH) *Child Health and Disability Prevention (CHDP) program nurses recognized that providers serving low-income children enrolled in **Medi-Cal were not consistently completing developmental screenings.Developmental screening is designed to identify problems or delays during regular well-child visits. In the United States, less than half of developmental delays are identified before the child reaches school age, meaning that critical intervention opportunities were missed during the preschool years.In 2016, the SBCDPH Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health (MCAH) program, in collaboration with CHDP, started a quality improvement (QI) project with the goal to improve developmental screening rates among CHDP providers. During fiscal year 2016/17, 145 CHDP providers were surveyed to determine the baseline rate of developmental screening implementation, barriers to implementation, and ways to overcome those barriers. The survey showed that the developmental screening implementation rate was 9%, which was significantly lower than expected. The QI involved providing customized technical support visits to CHDP providers and staff in their offices. During the visits, CHDP nurses focused on areas identified in the survey as barriers to implementation. By the end of the fiscal year 2018/19 the implementation rate was 56% (47% improvement).