Innovating Pediatric Care: The Development and Impact of a Partial Hospitalization Program for Eating Disorders at CHEO

This session will provide an in-depth overview of how the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) reimagined its Eating Disorder Program in response to the unprecedented surge of pediatric patients requiring care at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on the creation of Canada’s first pediatric Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP) for eating disorders, the session will explore the redesign from a more traditional 3-tier model of eating disorder care to one offering four distinct levels of care within one overarching program: inpatient, partial hospitalization, day treatment, and outpatient. This shift allowed for an individualized approach to match the intensity and modality of care with each patient and family’s unique needs.

PHP offers a comprehensive, flexible, and personalized treatment option for children and youth with eating disorders who require intensive medical and psychiatric care but are stable enough to be in the community overnight. Through a collaborative, multidisciplinary team, this innovative program has improved patient outcomes by reducing inpatient lengths of stay and readmission rates.

This interactive and informative session will appeal to both front-line clinicians and health system leaders. As a group, we will share lessons learned from this successful program restructuring which are widely applicable to other areas of pediatric care in which intensive treatment offerings or inpatient admissions are a part of clinical care provision.