In a diagnosis desert, Springfield autism center aims to reduce wait time for evaluations
As of the moment, Missouri has six centers where people can seek an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis: St. Louis has three centers, while Kansas City, Columbia and Cape Girardeau each have one. But for people in southwest Missouri, the options are limited.
"We’re in a desert. There are little things: Mercy, the Arc and Missouri State have had a diagnostic clinic that eeks out a couple (evaluations) a month, but we’re talking — we have hundreds of kids waiting," said Dr. Kyle John, a child and adolescent psychiatrist.
Springfield's Burrell Behavioral Health also offers evaluations and services for those with autism, and has done so since 2008. According to Matthew Lemmon, vice president of communications for Burrell, their autism center is on pace to have more than 12,500 visits this year, including more than 200 diagnostic evaluations.
Arc of the Ozarks, a non-profit that provides services to families and individuals with disabilities, is planning on creating an oasis in that desert by opening a neurodevelopmental and autism center in late 2023. John is the medical director for that center, which is in partnership with with Mercy Hospital and Missouri State University.
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"For the past two years, we’ve been working with The Arc of the Ozarks to provide services to patients with autism at Mercy Branson Multispecialty. We’re now also partnering for the new Autism Center under construction in Springfield as part of a $5 million matching state grant," Mercy said in a statement. "This work will expand services in our area for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and we are so pleased to be a part of this major step forward."
The center aims to offer timely evaluations and to make interventions and resources more accessible for those in the area, no matter what their age is.
More diagnoses with less waiting time
It's unclear how common autism is in Missouri. The most recent information from the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Network only looks at children in St. Louis and the surrounding counties. While the prevalence of autism in 8-year-olds there is 1 in 41, those numbers may not hold true for the rest of the state, especially in areas with less access to diagnostic resources.
The Department of Mental Health's Developmental Disabilities Division said in December 2017 that of the 37,067 individuals they served, 13,720 had autism, according to a 2018 report.
Currently, the Arc of the Ozarks and Mercy have a small clinic in Branson, which completes about 100 evaluations each year. The Springfield autism center wants to "scale that up to do 450 to 550 evaluations a year," said Tim Dygon, executive vice president of Arc of the Ozarks.
Across the state, people are waiting a year and a half to two years to receive an ASD diagnosis. John hopes the Springfield center will be able to see people in a fraction of that time: "I would love to see our wait time to be four to eight weeks."
The Springfield center will see patients as young as 18 months, according to Dygon, making the reduced wait time even more important.
"You don’t want to wait for anything for a couple years, but if you need to wait six months for a knee replacement, you’re going to hurt for six months," John said. "If you wait six months (for an ASD evaluation), these kids get further and further behind. You can’t get those developmental opportunities back."
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'Kids with autism become adults with autism'
While early diagnosis is important in getting needed interventions in place, the center will also serve as a resource for adults with autism, as well.
"You see often adults with autism don’t have a place to get services, so we wanted to make this not only holistic in the aim of how many kids we’ll serve, but also adults with autism," Dygon said. "Because kids with autism become adults with autism, and still need the service."
In order to accommodate adults, the center plans to have a waiting room for adults and a waiting room for children, as well as the ability to partition off a recreational area so multiple groups can use it at once.
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Arc of the Ozarks hopes Springfield can help increase area resources
The Springfield center will offer more than evaluations: It will also provide a variety of outpatient services including occupational and physical therapy, counseling, some medical services and the Arc of the Ozark's family advocacy program. It will also serve individuals with ADHD or other neurodevelopmental concerns or disabilities.
"One of our visions with this clinic, too, is to support families. I think that’s often overlooked, unfortunately, when you’re talking about autism," Dygon said. "You get service to the kids; make sure there’s stuff in place, hopefully, but those families deserve as much support."
Arc of the Ozarks and Mercy are planning to open locations focused on treatment, which will serve as "spokes" to Springfield's diagnostic hub. One such spoke already exists in Branson. Currently, Dygon said, they are looking at areas like Lebanon, Mountain Grove and Boliver, but that could change as center serves patients and sees where services are most needed.
"Our heart behind this is that we want to create something of great value for the community. Not just for the kids and families, but the community in general," Dygon said. "I think that’s one thing we’ll continue to listen to is feedback from our community on what else is needed. Especially with our family advocates — they talk to the families, and say, hey, this is a gap, we need this."
Susan Szuch is the health and public policy reporter for the Springfield News-Leader. Follow her on Twitter @szuchsm. Story idea? Email her at sszuch@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Springfield center focused on autism diagnoses plans to open late 2023
