Detection of Undiagnosed and Poorly Controlled Asthma in a Hospital-Based Outpatient Pediatric Primary Care Clinic Using a Health Risk Assessment System

Objective. To determine the rate of undiagnosed and poorly controlled asthma detected by a computerized health risk assessment (HRA) survey system in an urban pediatric hospital-based outpatient teaching clinic. Methods. A software-based HRA system uses survey answer patterns to identify children with (1) probable, (2) uncontrolled, and (3) moderate to severe asthma. Parents of patients > 2 years of age were asked by clinic staff to complete the touch screen computer survey before seeing their physician from August 2005 through July 2006. Results. The HRA survey predicted 26% (282/1,098) to have probable asthma. Of these, 51% (144/282) were controlled and the parents reported a previous diagnosis of asthma; 14% (40/282) were controlled and the parents did not report a previous diagnosis of asthma; 25% (71/282) were uncontrolled and the parents reported a previous diagnosis of asthma; and 10% (27/282) were uncontrolled and no previous diagnosis of asthma was reported by the parents. Among active cases completing the baseline version survey (N = 217), 68% reported emergency department (ED) visits / hospitalizations in the last 2 years (44% > 2), while 59% reported missed school days during the previous year (23% > 5 days). Impairment, as defined by the 2007 National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute/National Asthma Education and Prevention Program (NHLBI/NAEPP) asthma guidelines, tended to be higher in patients without a previous diagnosis of asthma, per parental report, but this trend only achieved significance in two measures: daytime symptoms > 2 days per week in the last 4 weeks (p = 0.028) and more than 5 missed school days in the past year (p = 0.001). Conclusion. A previously validated HRA system can consistently identify a high rate of undiagnosed and poorly controlled asthma in an urban pediatric hospital–based teaching clinic. The utility of such a system would be to reduce missed opportunities for delivery of care and morbidity for the patients who currently have undiagnosed and/or uncontrolled asthma in the pediatric primary care outpatient setting.