Share Decision Making for a Better Quality of Life

From September 2012

Asthma is a hard chronic condition to treat due to the high costs of healthcare, lack of compliance and disparities in health costs.  It is important for patients to be responsible for their own healthcare and a good way for doing this is through the use of Shared Decision Making (SDM).  The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is the lead Federal agency charged with improving the quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of health care in the United States.  AHRQ is working with our asthma research team to implement comparative effectiveness research methods to improve outcomes for patients with asthma - in other words, finding better ways for patients to live with their asthma.

One of the goals is to improve the health of school-aged children by using a centralized data base in the school system and throughout the Carolinas Healthcare System.  This will continue even after the study is complete and improve the communication between school nurses and providers.  Preliminary results show that overall medical emergencies have decreased, fewer students are missing school, medical costs have decreased and their asthma is better controlled. 

For more information about this asthma study, please contact Tami Alkhazraji at thamara.alkhazraji@carolinashealthcare.org.