Early Intervention Colorado (EI-CO) Participant Characteristics, Service Use, and Patient-Reported Outcomes, Colorado, 2017-2018

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act authorizes states to create early intervention (EI) programming to provide developmental and therapeutic services to infants and toddlers with a developmental condition; EI programs are mandated to report on child and family outcomes for purposes of accountability and quality improvement. For both purposes, there is critical need for research evidence on the adequacy of EI services. The researchers for this study partnered with a large urban EI program in Colorado that had recently transitioned to electronic data capture and was implementing a statewide initiative to facilitate function-focused care with individual families and paired collected electronic patient-reported outcomes (e-PRO) data with EI administrative data on child and family characteristics and service use to more fully examine EI service adequacy relative to patient-important outcomes. This study collected information from Young Children's Participation and Environment Measure (YC-PEM e-PRO) on home, environment, and community participation, involvement, and desired change. Measurements were also collected from the Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory Computer Adaptive Test (PEDI-CAT e-PRO) on mobility, social cognitive, and daily activities domains. The Child Outcomes Summary (COS) was used to capture functional performance related to having positive social relationships, acquiring and using knowledge and skills, and taking appropriate action to meet needs. Early Intervention Service Use measured EI intensity, whether child received specific services including physical therapy (PT), occupational therapy (OT), speech therapy (ST), psychology, or developmental intervention (DI), and the total number of service hours received within each discipline. Demographic variables include reasons child received EI services, number of developmental delay conditions, age, race, and ethnicity; as well as caregiver's education, employment, number of children at home, income, and insurance type.