What Do We Want To Know?

Low-value care is defined as the use of a health service, such as treatments and investigations, for which the harms or costs outweigh the benefits. We are studying the use of 6 low-value healthcare services in children aged 1 to 12 months hospitalized with bronchiolitis to better understand the use of low-value care, and how this differs between different patients, doctors, and hospitals.

The treatments of interest are:

1. respiratory virus testing

2. chest x-rays

3. continuous pulse oximetry

4. short-acting beta-agonists

5. systemic corticosteroids

6. antibiotics

Our questions are:

1. How frequently used are the 6-low value care services?

2. How much variability is there in the use of low-value care services between different patients, doctors, and hospitals?

3. How do family characteristics (like race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, language) contribute to differences and disparities in bronchiolitis care?

How Are We Doing It?

We are collecting data from medical charts on the care and treatments patients received while admitted for bronchiolitis. We are also collecting questionnaire data from parents to know more about the family’s characteristics, their perspectives and experiences with the care received for bronchiolitis, and a follow-up questionnaire that will help us know if additional visits to the hospital happened in the 30 days after a child’s discharge. 

How Can I Participate?

We are recruiting parents of children aged 1 to 12 months old and hospitalized with bronchiolitis in 15 hospitals across Canada.

If you are approached for the study, you will be asked to complete questionnaires while you are at the hospital with your child. You will be recontacted by phone or email 30-days after your child is discharged to complete the follow-up questionnaire. Both questionnaires should not take longer than 5-10 minutes.

How Is The Project Going?

We are currently wrapping up participant recruitment across sites, and confirming our next step: either continuing recruitment in some sites to reach our original targets, or supplementing recruitment with retrospective data collection.