In its short history, Improve Care Now has achieved several milestones in the treatment of children and teens with ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s Disease.

Most importantly, Improve Care Now is having a very positive impact on patient health.  Patients in remission from their disease have increased more than 20% under the alliance’s program, and this number is still increasing.

If all patients with these diseases were participating in Improve Care Now, 
10,000 more of them would also be in remission today.

Part of achieving this success is based on patient interactions with their care providers.  Since the start of the program, many measures of care for patients with Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis have increased dramatically (see box).

Model Care Guideline

As part of their collaboration, patients and doctors have worked together to effectively monitor disease severity, and to create, document and follow specific written plans to help patients to manage their disease.

To effectively help patients, the Improve Care Now collaborative has formulated a Model Care Guideline and an algorithm to improve the management of patients with unsatisfactory nutrition or growth.  These guidelines help physicians to recommend effective treatment options that have been discovered and tested over thousands of patient visits.

Continuing Advances

The members of the Improve Care Now alliance are continuing to develop and use four specific tools which we expect will lead to further improvement in the delivery of care and further improvements in patient health:

1. The Population Management Tool facilitates consistent and reliable data entry of patient / doctor visit data, and provides management tools to help physicians proactively manage the entire patient population.
2. Pre-visit Planning provides a clear process and tools for advance planning of patient visits across the medical practice with ongoing monitoring for consistency.
3. Care Protocols provide a roadmap for providing excellent care throughout the medical practice with a very high reliability.
4. Audit Tools enable the sharing of results across the practice on a daily basis, and with all care sites on a monthly basis, so that all doctors and patients benefit from the experiences learned during thousands of patient visits.

With 16 participating medical facilities, over 2,200 participating patients and data analysis from more than 6,600 patient visits, the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP) has stated, “This is the largest [patient data] registry in existence for this patient population and an essential resource for research and ongoing improvement.”

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