Telehealth, which boomed during COVID, can be the nearest thing to a miracle for some diagnoses and treatments. Other health concerns rely more heavily on in-person visits.
Autism evaluations can be hard to access. There can be waitlists that may be as long as years, assessment can involve travel, and it may involve multiple appointments. That adds up to hardship for many families.
Now, a new study suggests that for some kids, telehealth may bridge the gap, enabling their assessments to be carried out over a distance.
How Hard Is It To Have A Child Assessed For Autism?
First, a parent notices (or is alerted to, perhaps by a teacher or doctor) signs that their child could be autistic. Since autism is on a spectrum, these signs could be noticed early, with speech delays and other developmental delays, or may even pass unnoticed until signs like sensory and social struggles start to interfere with life.
Then, it’s time for a referral. If your pediatrician provides one, you’ll fill out a sheaf of paperwork and join a waitlist. That list could be months long or years long. That’s years in which you may struggle to find the support your child needs, access an IEP, or even truly understand what’s going on. It can feel like limbo, reading books on autism, joining parent groups, and wondering, all the while, if this is truly the right path.
Finally, once you make it to the top of the list, specialists who diagnose autism are hard to find in rural areas, so for many of us, the next step is travel. So now we load up a child (often one who has sensory struggles and relies heavily on routines to feel safe) and take him to strange places, far from home, where his usual routines, comforts, and habits are difficult or impossible to access.
Telehealth Already Solves Some Of This
Telehealth assessments have been developed that can be used for some autistic kids. A study last year found that for very young kids who were nonverbal or minimally verbal, telehealth screenings matched in-person screenings quite well.
However, there is less clarity about assessment for older kids or those who are more verbal. As mentioned, kids with lower or less visible support needs may not be referred for assessments until later and, as a result, may already be in school by the time their family seeks an assessment. (Some folks even make it to adulthood before their support needs are recognized, and assessment access becomes even more complicated in adulthood.)
A process for evaluating nonverbal and minimally verbal kids remotely has been in use for years, but it’s just not as accurate for older kids or those with higher verbal skills.
A New Telehealth Assessment & Study
Researchers created a new set of assessment scales that could be used for older kids with greater verbal abilities. As published in Springer Nature, it was tested on 39 kids aged almost-3 (33 months) through 15, all of whom were patients whose families were seeking screenings.
Each kid whose family agreed to participate in the trial was seen separately for an in-person screening and a telehealth screening using the new assessment scales, and the two screenings matched outcomes in almost 2/3 (25 out of 39) of cases.
Notably, this trial used two separate evaluation tools, one for kids with phrased speech and one for those with fluent speech, and the researchers recognized that the tool for kids with lower speech abilities was more accurate than the one for kids with fluent speech.
What This Means For Parents
For parents, and for kids who have some traits and struggles associated with autism, this means that waitlists could get much shorter.
As the assessment scales improve, telehealth options can expand to offer greater availability for kids with higher verbal levels, and potentially for those with lower or less-visible support needs. Even for the kids to whom telehealth is not yet available, expanding these programs can shorten lines at traditional office-based assessment centers.
Parents can reach out to their pediatricians or health insurance providers for more information about assessment options tailored to their child’s specific needs.
