Comparison of the Children With Special Health Care Needs Screener to the Questionnaire for Identifying Children With Chronic Conditions—Revised

Abstract

The Children with Special Health Care Needs (CSHCN) Screener is an instrument to identify CSHCN, one that is based on parent-reported consequences experienced by children with ongoing health conditions. Information about how this instrument compares to other methods for identifying CSHCN is important for current and future uses of the CSHCN Screener. The goal of this study was to assess the level of agreement between the CSHCN Screener and the Questionnaire for Identifying Children With Chronic Conditions--Revised (QuICCC-R) and to describe the characteristics of children in whom these methods do not agree. The CSHCN Screener and the QuICCC-R were administered to 2 samples: a random sample of parents of children under age 18 years through the first pretest of the National CSHCN Survey (n = 2420) and a random sample of children under age 14 years enrolled in a managed care health plan (n = 497). Information on specific conditions and needs for health services were collected for children identified by one or both instruments in the national sample. Data from the administrative data-based Clinical Risk Groups (CRGs) were collected for all children in the health plan sample. The proportions of children identified with the CSHCN Screener and the QuICCC-R were compared, the level of agreement between these 2 methods was assessed, and the health service needs of children identified by the QuICCC-R but not the CSHCN Screener were evaluated. In both study samples, the CSHCN Screener agreed with the QuICCC-R approximately 9 out of 10 times on whether or not a child was identified as having a special health care need. Compared to the CSHCN Screener, the QuICCC-R identified an additional 7.6% and 8.5% of children as having special health care needs in the national and health plan samples, respectively. Compared to children identified by the QuICCC-R only, the odds were 12 times greater that children identified by both the CSHCN Screener and the QuICCC-R needed health care services, 6 times greater that parents named a specific chronic health condition, and 9 times greater that children were identified with a chronic condition using the CRG algorithm. Study design and purposeful differences in question design or content account for most cases in which children are not identified by the CSHCN Screener but are identified using the QuICCC-R. The brief CSHCN Screener exhibits a high level of agreement with the longer QuICCC-R instrument. Whereas nearly all children identified by the CSHCN Screener are also identified by the QuICCC-R, the QuICCC-R classifies a higher proportion of children as having special health care needs.