Feasibility of recruiting publicly insured children with special health care needs for a population-based clinical...

Area of Science:

• Clinical research methodology
• Health services research
• Pediatric health

Background:

• Recruitment of children with special health care needs (CSHCN) into clinical studies presents unique challenges.
• Utilizing existing healthcare administrative data, such as Medicaid, may offer a feasible solution for identifying and recruiting CSHCN.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the feasibility of recruiting CSHCN into a clinical study by leveraging Medicaid data.
• To determine recruitment, enrollment, and data completion rates among CSHCN identified through Medicaid.

Main Methods:

• Employed 3M Clinical Risk Grouping software to categorize Medicaid-enrolled CSHCN (ages 7-17) in Washington into severity groups: episodic, life-long, or malignancy/catastrophic.
• Compared contact, recruitment, enrollment, and data completion proportions across these severity groups using statistical tests.

Main Results:

• Successfully contacted 922 out of 2,666 CSHCN (34.6%) and recruited 211 (22.8%).
• Higher proportions of CSHCN with malignancies/catastrophic conditions were contacted and recruited (P < 0.01).
• Enrollment rates did not differ significantly across severity groups (P = 0.27), but CSHCN with life-long conditions had lower complete data rates (P = 0.03).

Conclusions:

• Recruiting CSHCN from Medicaid files for clinical studies is feasible.
• Recruitment success and data completeness may be influenced by chronic condition severity.