News

The Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN—ranked No. 1 in Digestive Disorders in the U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals rankings—has joined the ImproveCareNow alliance of health care facilities dedicated to helping children and adolescents with ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s Disease. For more information about the Mayo Clinic, visit the Mayo Clinic website. 

According to a recently released report by the US News & World Report1, ImproveCareNow centers are among the best children’s hospitals, ranked at the top of the Honor Roll and in Gastroenterology specialty. Rankings are based on a reputational survey sent to pediatric specialists and a data survey that is sent to a handpicked set of hospitals.

The ImproveCareNow Collaborative is a program in which pediatric gastroenterologists at 16 practice sites in the US are working together to develop, test and implement quality improvement tools to improve the care and health of over 2,000 children and adolescents with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Since early 2008 the proportion of our Crohn’s disease patients who are in remission has progressively increased from 49% to 64%, and the remission rate of our ulcerative colitis patients is increasing as well. 

ImproveCareNow is pleased to report that a recently completed survey shows that the 29 participating sites of ImproveCareNow have approximately 270 physicians and nearly 10,000 patients. The Advanced Track teams, which began the collaborative in 2007, have about 3,000 patients and currently 2,200 (71%) of them are enrolled.  The Foundations Track Teams, began in 2008, and have about 7,000 patients and are just beginning to enroll them.  

Watch ImproveCareNow physician Dr. Chris Forrest present via web/NIH VideoCast for the Conference on Methodological Challenges in Comparative Effectiveness Research, December 2-3, 2010. Please find below the details for accessing the video.

The American Board of Pediatrics (ABP) is the certifying organization for pediatric physicians.  Certification by the ABP is recognized throughout the world as a credential signifying a high level of physician competence.

 “The system of providing care for the chronically ill is broken,” says Peter Margolis, MD, PhD, co-Principal Investigator of the grant project and one of the first participants in ImproveCareNow. “Building on our success with ImproveCareNow, we aim to create a totally new system of providing care through collaboration among doctors, health professionals and patients.”

AWARD: $10,000 USD  |  DEADLINE: 6/18/11 | SOURCE: InnoCentive  | CHALLENGE ID: 9932749 

Challenge Overview

The Collaborative Chronic Care Network (C3N) is looking for approaches to using games and/or game dynamics applications to inspire adolescents with inflammatory bowel disease (both Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis) and other chronic illnesses to create and maintain their own health. 

To determine the potential effectiveness of programs such as ImproveCareNow, it's important to understand how care is provided in the absense of such programs. The study found that there are significant variations in care, and that gaps exist between recommended and actual care.  An abstract of the study is provided below, followed by a link to the full article on the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition web site.

This past Friday, doctors, nurses, parents and policy makers met to release the much anticipated results of a study by ImproveCareNow, the collaborative that is helping kids with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis get better now. Writing about the event, Thomas McCormally, senior director of Public Relations at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, says: