WellSpan Health has been approved for a nearly $1 million funding award by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to help improve antibiotic prescribing for children with acute respiratory tract infections in all of its urgent care and pediatric practices as well as select primary care practices across the central Pennsylvania. Assuring appropriate use of antibiotics, which are commonly prescribed for children, can help prevent the growing problem of drug-resistant infections and avoid adverse side effects, an effort that aligns with the ongoing work of WellSpan's Spotlight on Children's Health initiative.

"With this funding award we can quickly put to practice evidence-based research to improve the lives of our youngest patients here in central Pennsylvania," said Dr. Michael Seim, senior vice president and chief quality officer for WellSpan Health. “It’s part of WellSpan’s commitment to high quality care and a perfect example of why we have partnered with PCORI."

"This PCORI funding award will support WellSpan Health to promote antibiotic stewardship for children with acute respiratory tract infections," said PCORI Executive Director Nakela L. Cook, M.D., MPH. "This project exemplifies PCORI's commitment to advancing the uptake of evidence into health care delivery settings to enable parents, caregivers and clinicians to make informed health care decisions and improve care delivery and health outcomes. We look forward to following the project’s progress and collaborating with WellSpan to share its results."

The $942,072 funding award is set to be implemented at the end of the calendar year and span 42 months. It is expected to benefit approximately 45,000 pediatric WellSpan patients aged 6 months to 12 years across 34 care sites within the health system.

The aim is to improve antibiotic prescribing by educating and training clinicians and team members. The funding award will also be used to support IT integration, including clinical decision support tools to empower providers prescribing within the electronic health record. It also includes MyWellSpan portal messages to patients as well engagement and follow up with patients by a care team member via telephone to assess patient needs.

Findings from the PCORI-funded patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER) study demonstrate that narrow-spectrum antibiotics were as effective as broad-spectrum antibiotics in treating acute respiratory tract infections among children, with fewer side effects.

WellSpan is a participant in PCORI’s Health Systems Implementation Initiative (HSII) and was selected among 41 other health systems through a PCORI funding opportunity recruiting HSII participants to promote evidence-based practice, based on findings generated from PCORI-funded patient-centered CER. HSII aims to reduce the estimated 17-year gap between evidence publication and clinical application. This initiative recognizes health systems’ practical experience and real-world insights are crucial for sustainable, large-scale implementation of practice-changing findings in clinical care.

This funding award has been approved pending completion of PCORI’s business and programmatic review and issuance of a formal award contract.

Last year, WellSpan received nearly $500,000 in initial PCORI funding for capacity building that helped lead to this award announcement.

PCORI is an independent, nonprofit organization authorized by Congress with a mission to fund patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research that provides patients, their caregivers and clinicians with the evidence-based information they need to make better-informed health and health care decisions.