ACPA Standards of Care (ACPA) require that all Cleft and Craniofacial Teams have in place "a mechanism to initially and periodically assess and treat, as appropriate, the psychological and social needs of patients and families/caregivers and to refer for further treatment as necessary" (Standard 5.1). Standard 6 requires that "The Team uses a process to evaluate its own performance with regard to patient assessment, treatment, or satisfaction and to make improvements as a result of those evaluations." Meeting each of these criteria can pose a challenge to Cleft and Craniofacial Teams. The Mental Health Special Interest Group along with the Americleft Psychosocial Group are working together to provide information on strategies for psychosocial screening. The goal of this presentation is to enable Teams to meet Standard 5.1 by implementing standardized procedures for screening families for psychosocial risk. Since most Teams already have some screening mechanism in place, implementation of standardized screening methods would provide a mechanism to assess quality improvement by comparing the current method to a method using standardized screening procedures and thus meet Standard 6. 

This course will first provide background information on the utility of a standardized method for screening for psychosocial risk. Methods for using clinical audit to compare current screening methods to a standardized approach will be discussed. Our second speaker will describe recommended instruments for risk screening and/or audit and provide some outcome data from a pilot quality assurance project and the Americleft project that document the value of using standardized instrumentation for screening. The third presenter will outline approaches that Teams can use to implement standardized screening into various Team formats. Finally, our last speaker will discuss how Teams can utilize the information generated from the screening process, to help provide brief interventions and link the patients and families with support services. 

Continuing Education

Attendees must register, attend and evaluate each webinar to receive continuing education credit. Presenter disclosures can be found in the "Topics" tab in the speaker bio. This course will be available on-demand through July 17, 2021.

• ACCME: ACPA designates this educational activity for a maximum of 1 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™.  Physicians should only claim credits commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity. The American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians.