News

ImproveCareNow (ICN) has had enormous success since it began 16 years ago, including increasing remission rates for thousands of young people with IBD, transforming how pediatric IBD care is  provided, enlightening and exciting clinicians and other care providers, and engaging patients and parents in a shared purpose and work. We are pleased to share our ImproveCareNow Annual Update, which includes highlights and achievements from 2022 and plans for our continued work to improve health, care, and costs for young people with IBD in 2023 and beyond.

An ImproveCareNow (ICN) care center, Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital, recently shared that their remission rate for children with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) cared for at their Karjoo Family Center for Pediatric Gastroenterology improved from 60% in 2013 to 87% in 2022. The director of the IBD program, Prateek Wali, MD, attributes this remarkable improvement in the health of children with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, at least in part to Upstate Golisano Children’s participation in ImproveCareNow.

According to the recently released report by U.S. News & World Report (USNWR), ImproveCareNow (ICN) care centers are among the best children’s hospitals, ranking at the top of the Honor Roll and in the Gastroenterology & GI Surgery specialty. USNWR rankings are based on a reputational survey sent to pediatric specialists and a data survey that is sent to a handpicked set of hospitals.

ImproveCareNow (ICN) will move to offering one in-person Community Conference and one Live Online Community Conference (LOCC) each ICN fiscal year. This hybrid conference model will allow the Network to reach and serve a large and distributed community of clinicians, parents/caregivers, patients, researchers & improvers to collaborate and improve care processes and outcomes in pediatric IBD.

The ICN community has benefited from increased and broader participation in our LOCCs over the past several years. We recognize, however, the invaluable connections that are made when we come together in person. We hope that this new model of alternating between in-person and online conferences will enable more participants to engage with each other in the ways that make the most sense for them, to advance our shared mission. We will use these first few years of this new cadence as a test and adapt as needed based on community feedback. 

Kristin Howe, President & Executive Director, ImproveCareNow

In 2021, Executive Leadership and key members of the ImproveCareNow network, completed a successful strategic planning period. Through this planning, the following domains were identified as key focal areas for the next three years: Outcomes; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion or “DEI”; Sustainability; Engagement; Technology.

ImproveCareNow has had enormous success since it began 15 years ago, including increasing remission rates for thousands of young people with IBD, transforming how pediatric IBD care is being provided, enlightening and exciting clinicians and other care providers, and engaging patients and parents in a shared purpose and work. We are pleased to share our ImproveCareNow Annual Update, which includes highlights and achievements from 2021 and plans for our continued work to improve health, care, and costs for young people with IBD in 2022 and beyond.

ImproveCareNow (ICN) is pleased to announce the appointment of seven new members to its Board of Directors. Each member will help support ICN’s work to transform the health, care and costs for all children and adolescents with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis (Inflammatory Bowel Disease or IBD) by building a sustainable collaborative chronic care network.

ImproveCareNow was highlighted in a September 2021 article by Healthcare Innovation called Pulling Together Around the Patient Experience. In the article, author David Raths uses interviews with key network participants to characterize the ways in which patients and clinicians are working together to co-produce care pathways, outcome measures and clinical trials - and the impact these efforts are having.

We are pleased to announce the ImproveCareNow Data Management Team has prepared and released the ImproveCareNow 2020 Annual Data Report. This report aims to present a brief summary of the patient data captured in the ICN Registry, including commentary on the impact of and response to the COVID-19 pandemic.