An evaluation of time spent meeting the needs of school-aged patients with a chronic illness by a hospital-school liaison program

Background: Given the increasing emphasis on care coordination between healthcare and schools, hospital-school liaison services are increasing in demand. Limited research examines hospital-school liaison programs that focus on educational journeys of school-age patients with a chronic illness. Thus, this study examined the work activity of liaisons from a well-recognized hospital-school program to determine the time needed to support the educational needs of patients with a hematologic or oncologic diagnosis for the purpose of reproducibility and quality improvement efforts. Methods: Due to the unique nature of the hospital-school liaison position, liaisons tracked time spent per patient, per specific task category, to support school-age patients (N = 419) using a self-report method that combined both work-sampling and time-and-motion methods over a 12-month period. The self-reported time log was divided into six categories including time spent on preparation, travel, consultation, documentation, school meetings, and in-service. Patients’ general diagnosis categories included sickle cell disease, leukemia/lymphoma, neuro-oncology, long-term cancer survivor, and other. Results: By category, liaisons spent most time on consultation, followed by preparation, travel, documentation, school meetings, and in-service. By diagnosis, leukemia/lymphoma diagnoses typically required the most support, followed by sickle cell disease, neuro-oncology, long-term survivor and other. Conclusions: Findings may be useful for programs seeking to establish or increase staff dedicated to the coordination of care between school and health care systems. Additionally, findings may be used to project institution or division-specific needs based on number of patients, and may increase the likelihood that a program is sufficiently staffed relative to disease-population demands.