Care Center Benefits
As part of the Autism Care Network, your site will:
Act directly to provide best practice care to patients
Involve providers and families from under-served communities
Develop standards of care
Use content and improvement experts to guide change
Identify, test, adopt and share evidence- based practices
Every site strives to provide each child and family:
- Optimal Health
- Better Quality of Life
- Fewer Challenging Behaviors
- Better Autism Knowledge
Autism Care Network Benefits
- Collaboration with elite autism care centers in the network
- Partnerships with patients, families, clinical teams, and scientists across the country
- Access to the network registry and data to drive better clinical care, identify gaps in care, and conduct research
- Access to a system for measuring change and impact
- Monthly data reports for both team-specific and network aggregate outcomes
- Tools for clinical visits, population management and pre-visit planning
- Support for innovative initiatives and research
- MOC credit for participating physicians
Autism Care Network: Membership Expectations
Autism Care Network Activities
Site Development and Improvement:
The list of activities below reflects the priorities of the Autism Care Network. Activities will support building a strong infrastructure of engaged families, scientists, and clinicians to support intervention trials that will provide evidence to inform care and improve outcomes for persons with ASD. All sites will be involved in expanding data collection across the broad clinical caseload. Sites will be awarded startup funding to offset the infrastructure costs to meet Autism Care Network objectives. MOC is available for participating physicians and CMEs for select Learning Network meetings.
- Establish a site improvement team
- Develop processes to collect data as part of patient care
- Submit patient data to the Autism Care Network registry
- Run tests of improvement (PDSA cycles) in direct relation to Key Driver Diagram (KDD)
- Work towards integrating data elements into the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and extracting the data into the Autism Care Network registry
- Attend Learning Network calls, Learning Labs, and Coaching Sessions
- Attend in-person and virtual Learning Network meetings
- Submit monthly Learning Network reports and annual site reports
- Commit to disseminating findings to the broader community
Clinical Improvement team
The sites who participate in the Learning Health Network are expected to test and implement changes using improvement methods and also track their success. There are several critical roles that should be represented on each site team:
- Key site leader – individual with the authority to make decisions and remove barriers when necessary; the primary liaison with Autism Care Network leadership.
- Clinical champion – individual who conducts the clinical work and has the practical and content expertise.
- Team leader – individual to act as a team manager and key contact for the Network.
- Patient Family Partner (PFP) – patient or family partner who has been seen at your site to provide the patient or family partner perspective (note: this role is often filled later than other team roles).
- Site Coordinator – individual responsible for supervising daily operations at the clinical site as they relate to enrollment, data collection, and data entry.