Across the country, waitlists for autism diagnosis services at centers such as the Thompson Center are months, sometimes years, long. This forces families to wait long periods of time before their questions about their child’s future can be answered. The Thompson Center is helping to combat these long waitlists for services, as well as a lack of access to autism specialists in underserved areas, through ECHO Autism. ECHO Autism launched in 2015 and has been greatly successful in training medical care providers around Missouri and the country in how to detect autism and provide treatment.
Following the success of ECHO Autism for primary care providers, the Thompson Center is expanding the program to include ECHO Autism: Diagnostics. This new program uses the same principals as ECHO Autism: Primary Care, but is focused on training professionals on how to diagnose autism using the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Second Edition (ADOS-2), the gold standard in autism diagnostic tools. Dr. Stephen Kanne, executive director of the Thompson Center and the leader of the ECHO Autism: Diagnostics hub team, says this new program will help shorten waitlists for families around the country.
“Having to wait months and months to receive a diagnosis can be incredibly hard on families,” Kanne said. “By using technology to train providers around the country on how to diagnose autism themselves, we can help reduce those waitlists as well as provide better access for families who live in rural and underserved areas. Rather than have to drive two or three hours to see an autism specialist, we can train providers in communities around the country so families can have quality care in their own home towns.”
Using state-of-the-art video conferencing technology, ECHO Autism brings autism expertise and care to underserved communities around the nation by simultaneously connecting dozens of care providers located in rural and underserved urban areas with an autism expert “hub team” located at the Thompson Center. The hub team for ECHO Autism: Diagnostics will include a neuropsychologist and autism diagnostician, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician, an autism assessment specialist, a family resource specialist, and a parental advocacy expert.
“This team of experts will provide valuable training and support for participants looking to learn more about how to detect and diagnose autism among their own patients and communities,” said Dr. Kristin Sohl, the director of ECHO Autism. “By increasing the number of professionals trained in autism diagnostics, we can shorten waitlists and allow patients to receive care locally rather than have to travel hundreds of miles in some cases to receive care.”
ECHO Autism: Diagnostics is open to professionals interested in autism diagnostics including psychologists, nurse practitioners and other licensed health care professionals. Sessions will take place twice a month and will include case presentations from the participants to the hub team. The hub team then will provide feedback and guidance to the participants, including what types of additional questions the provider should ask the patient or what other testing might be necessary to make a proper diagnosis.
Through guided practice, participants will increase their knowledge of evidence-based practices for screening and diagnosis, standardized assessment measures for evaluating autism, and common medical and psychiatric concerns in children with autism.
“Providing local autism diagnostic services will allow specialized centers like the Thompson Center to be able to focus on the more complex, difficult cases,” said Kourtney Christopher, an autism assessment specialist and member of the ECHO Autism: Diagnostics hub team. “If we can train providers to recognize and diagnose the most clear and obvious cases of autism themselves, it will not only help those families receive care sooner, but will help families with more complex needs to be seen at the Thompson Center and other autism centers more quickly as well.”
Thompson Center faculty and staff also have recently started two additional ECHO Autism programs, including ECHO Autism: School Psychology and ECHO Autism: Applied Behavioral Analysis. These programs use the same videoconferencing approach with the “hub team” of experts to train providers on best practices for working with people with autism in their specific fields. Long-term plans include the creation of additional programs in order to train providers in all fields on how to best care for patients with autism.
ECHO Autism Diagnostics begins in January with a three-day in-person ADOS-2 training session. The videoconferencing sessions are set to begin in April. For more information about ECHO Autism Diagnostics, contact Kourtney Christopher at christopherkl@health.missouri.edu or (573) 882-6140.