“We’ve taken these findings as a call to action,” Dr. Burnham said. “Our aim over the next 18 months or so is to decrease the cJADAS score in the whole population from 2.7 to 2.5 and, importantly, to decrease the disparity between non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic white patients by 50%,” by developing new clinic processes to support patients and caregivers, he said.
He said the hope is that there will be more efficient scheduling of appointments for at-risk patients and improvement at assessing patient-reported outcomes and overcoming barriers to care.
“We envision monthly that our coordinators and social workers will review patients with high disease activity and find patients without appointments,” he said.
This requires quality JADAS information and empowering clinicians to develop patient-specific plans on things like accessing medication and physical therapy, he said.
“We don’t know that cause yet (for the spike) and I think this is a really important area of research in the future,” Dr. Burnham said. “But these differences may be amenable to population-management approaches. And these differences, based on patient-reported outcomes, suggest an opportunity for improved assessment during visits.”
Thomas R. Collins is a freelance medical writer based in Florida.
References
- Knight A, Weiss P, Morales K, et al. Depression and anxiety and their association with healthcare utilization in pediatric lupus and mixed connective tissue disease patients: A cross-sectional study. Pediatr Rheumatol Online J. 2014 Sep 10;12:42.
- Fonseca R, Bernardes M, Terroso G, et al. Silent burdens in disease: Fatigue and depression in SLE. Autoimmune Dis. 2014;2014:790724.
