The number of examinations in children has been greatly reduced, registration in adults has improved considerably and the number of visits to the emergency department has fallen slightly. Because expensive medication was purchased jointly, the hospitals were able to save costs.
IBD
Inflammatory Bowel Disease is the most commonly used term for chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. These inflammatory diseases include Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Crohn’s disease is a chronic inflammation of the entire digestive tract. Ulcerative colitis is a chronic inflammation of the lining of the colon. IBD cannot be cured. Treatment aims to keep the disease at bay. In the Netherlands, 1 in 200 people suffer from chronic intestinal diseases, such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
Together, the Santeon hospitals treat almost 12,000 of the 85,000 patients with IBD in the Netherlands.
To research
Patients suffering from IBD have to deal with many stressful tests, such as calprotectin tests – which look at stool – and MRI scans. In addition, the investigations entail high costs. By comparing the care results with each other, it turned out that there was a lot of difference between the Santeon hospitals in the number of examinations that were conducted in children. This has led to Santeon guidelines, as a result of which the number of examinations in hospitals has fallen considerably compared to the previous year, with the same care result. The number of calprotectin tests fell by 22 percent and the number of MRI scans by 8 percent.
Better registration
In order to provide good care to IBD patients, it is important for doctors to map out the disease. This is done via the Montreal score. A patient’s disease activity is measured by the Physician Global Assessment (PGA) score. The registration of these scores proves to be difficult, because many healthcare professionals are involved in IBD and there are sometimes “ICT challenges”. During the process, registration of the Montreal score in Crohn’s disease increased from 25 percent to 53 percent and in ulcerative colitis from 15 percent to 45 percent. The registration of the PGA score increased from 6 percent to 46 percent in Crohn’s disease and from 4 percent to 40 percent in ulcerative colitis. This has been achieved by drawing the attention of care providers more often to the lack of registration scores and file research, whereby missing values are supplemented. In the coming years, efforts will be made to improve registration even further.