COMPUTERIZED CASE MANAGEMENT IN AN ASTHMA SPECIALIZED CLINIC
LuoYQ, Li ZY,
Wang HJ, Wu JZ, ChengYZ
Capital
Institute of Paediatrics, Beijing, China
Objective:
This study is aimed at providing a solution to overcome the
inconvenient manual work of case counting, to help analyzing the patients’
conditions, to timely report the contact-lost patients and to provide
information on asthma care and education accordingly.
Methods:
In our asthma specialized clinic the EPIINFO software is used for managing cases when the patients
firstly come for treatment and the FoxBASE software is employed for all
data- base analyses.
Results: The results
showed that 381 cases, accounted
for 78.2% of the total 487 who were for the first time being treated, had
the onset of disease before school age and received improper treatment.
89.1% of the 381 cases had been treated with antibiotics and 52.2% of them
were over 6 years old.
Conclusion: During a period of two
years with the computerization of case management in the asthma specialized
clinic, health guidance and asthma education were individually provided to
more than 200 patients who were for the first time being admitted for
treatment. The nurses could easily and successfully communicate at regular
interval with the contact-lost patients among 4439 person-times to
encourage them to return for re-checking and continuation of treatment.
Therefore, the use of computerization in case management in asthma
specialized clinic is advantageous in increasing the re-exam rate and compliance
of the patients, and in the long run enhancing asthma prevention.