Pediatric to Adult Healthcare Transition Initiative Expands

Beginning in November 2024, Gillette Children’s launched the Pediatric to Adult Healthcare Transition (HCT) process as a pilot within the Spina Bifida Coordinated Adult and Pediatric Clinics. Since that time, HCT has expanded to the Gillette Children’s Down Syndrome Clinic, and plans are in place to launch within the Complex Care Clinic by Fall 2025.

Gillette Children’s continues its focus on Pediatric to Adult HCT by expanding HCT frameworks to different clinics. Ultimately, the goal is to develop and implement an evidence-based and evidence-informed pediatric to adult HCT process at Gillette Children’s to provide a purposeful, planned move of youth and young adults with chronic physical and medical conditions from child- to adult-oriented healthcare.

Since launching this initiative in the coordinated clinic sessions of Spina Bifida Adult and Pediatric Clinics, operational accomplishments have included:

• Implementing in-person educational sessions for nursing staff who are the primary administrators of the transition readiness assessment (TRA). These sessions have been valuable in ensuring nursing partners can support providers who are educating patients regarding HCT.
• Automating the TRA within the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) to send annual assessments to patients to gauge their transition or self-management preparedness.
• Enhancing the existing Gillette EMR infrastructure surrounding the documentation of healthcare transition for patients across disciplines, including capturing and visualizing the results of the TRA globally and having these readily available to all clinicians.
• Developing a variety of patient and family resources to support successful transition.

Starting an HCT program from scratch means there’s no shortage of opportunities to expand and enhance current efforts. The next areas of highest impact include using TRA data collection to help plan clinical intervention and further education resources; expanding into other specialties and clinics throughout Gillette Children’s; and presenting, publishing, and sharing the clinical outcomes, tools, processes, and learning opportunities we have discovered during this vital work.