The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA

Abstract #62035

Veronica M. Osejo, BS¹, Leslie Lieberman, MSW², and Mary Anne Armstrong, MA¹. (1) Division of Research, Kaiser Permanente, 2000 Broadway, Oakland, CA 94612, (510) 891-3456, veronica.osejo@kp.org, (2) Patient Care Services, Kaiser Permanente, 1950 Franklin, Oakland, CA 94612

Early Start is an obstetric clinic-based perinatal substance abuse treatment program in Kaiser Permanente Northern California Region (KPNCR) serving a prenatal population of 30,000 women annually. The program provides substance use screening and treatment by Early Start Specialists located in the obstetric departments who conduct risk assessments resulting in DSM-IV-based diagnoses, educational sessions, and brief interventions integrated with prenatal care. Currently Early Start is in operation at 22 obstetric clinics. In collaboration with Kaiser Permanente Division of Research, the Early Start program has developed and now maintains a comprehensive web-based registry that contains substance use data on all new KPNCR prenatal patients since 01/01/99. This Oracle database contains prenatal data (responses to the screening questionnaire, including the quantity and frequency of drug use one year prior to pregnancy and during the current pregnancy), risk assessment data, and treatment data for those women who attended treatment sessions. The majority of pregnant women have a urine toxicology test at entry to prenatal care. The database is linked to the Kaiser regional laboratory databases and stores and reports the historic (back to 01/01/97) and current urine toxicology results of all prenatal patients. The uniqueness of this robust registry is that it currently contains data on more than 118,000 prenatal patients and is accessible on a secured intranet web site. Therefore it is available as a patient care management tool for the Early Start Specialists and obstetric providers as well as a research tool for the Division of Research to conduct population based research.

Learning Objectives:

• At the conclusion of the session, the participants in this session will have learned about the existence of a comprehensive perinatal substance abuse patient care web-based registry, which will be demonstrated in the session, and will recognize the usefulness of such a registry for purposes of individual patient care and population based research in the area of perinatal maternal substance use.

Keywords: Prenatal Care, Substance Abuse

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.