Reducing Loss to Follow-up after Failure to Pass Newborn Hearing Screening

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This announcement solicits applications for the Universal Newborn Hearing Screening and Intervention Program. This announcement solicits proposals for reducing the loss to follow-up of infants who have not passed a physiologic newborn hearing screening examination prior to discharge from the newborn nursery by utilizing specifically targeted and measurable interventions. The purpose of this funding opportunity is to further focus efforts to improve the loss to documentation/loss to follow-up by utilizing specific interventions such as quality improvement methodology to achieve measurable improvement in the numbers of infants who receive appropriate and timely follow-up.  The loss to follow-up/documentation (LTF/D) dropped by 10% between 2009 and 2011, the last year for which we have annual data.  The goal is that there will be at least a 5% per year reduction in the LTF/D in years 2014 through 2016. To accomplish the stated purpose of this funding opportunity, States are expected to use quality improvement methodology that will include gathering a team of stakeholders or reinvigorating an existing team to assist in the quality improvement work. Teams should include at a minimum the state EHDI (Early Hearing Detection and Intervention) coordinator as the lead person, a pediatric audiologist, a parent of a child with a hearing loss, a representative from the early intervention program, and a data person. A meeting schedule should be set up for the teams. The team will need to craft an aim statement, identify change strategies, implement PDSA cycles to decide what changes lead to improvement, and spread successful changes throughout the system. Data collected for the CDC, as well as other appropriate data should be collected in a timely manner, and reviewed and analyzed on an ongoing basis to determine if the changes proposed in the work scope of the application have led to system-wide improvements and reported out to the appropriate stakeholders.

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