Analyzing Patterns in NewSTEPs Site Review Recommendations: Practical Applications for Newborn Screening Programs

Yvonne Kellar-Guenther; Marci K Sontag; Eric Linder; Sikha Singh; Ruthanne Sheller; Jelili Ojodu

doi:10.3390/ijns5010013

Analyzing Patterns in NewSTEPs Site Review Recommendations: Practical Applications for Newborn Screening Programs

Int J Neonatal Screen. 2019 Feb 12;5(1):13. doi: 10.3390/ijns5010013. eCollection 2019 Mar.

Authors

Yvonne Kellar-Guenther^{1

2}, Marci K Sontag^{1

2}, Eric Linder^{2

3}, Sikha Singh⁴, Ruthanne Sheller⁴, Jelili Ojodu⁴

Affiliations

¹ Center for Public Health Innovation, CI International, 7852 S. Elati St., #201, Littleton, CO 80120, USA.
² Colorado School of Public Health, University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, CO 80045, USA.
³ Healthgrades. 1801 California Street #800, Denver, CO 80202, USA.
⁴ Association of Public Health Laboratories, 8515 Georgia Avenue, Suite 700, Silver Spring, MD 20910, USA.

Abstract

The Newborn Screening Technical assistance and Evaluation Program (NewSTEPs) conducts non-regulatory site reviews of state newborn screening programs in the US with the goal of providing comprehensive reports and recommendations to support quality improvements within the system. A detailed coding and qualitative analysis of data extracted from reports of seven programs visited between 2012 and 2017, of thirteen pre-site visit surveys completed by state newborn screening programs, and of information from interviews conducted with three site review experts revealed four common themes that exist across states within the national newborn screening system. These themes include opportunities to implement improvements in: (1) communications inside and outside of the state newborn screening program, (2) education, (3) information technology, and (4) operations. The cross-cutting recommendations provided by NewSTEPs within the comprehensive site review reports may prove valuable for all state programs to consider and to incorporate as quality improvement measures in the absence of a full site review. The analysis of the site review process and recommendations identified important opportunities for improvement, many of which were previously unknown to be common across programs, and also provided affirmation of known challenges.

Keywords: continuous quality improvement; evaluation; newborn screening; public health; site reviews; technical assistance.